(Hmm, never mind about anything else, can I just have a few monthly tickets—feels like the monthly tickets this month are really lacking...)
As the most special and important planet in the Shadow Space, Mother Star Gaia is rarely open to the public. For the ordinary citizens of Shadow City, this vast land hanging upside down in the sky is rely a beautiful background that is unreachable. It is said there are many urban legends related to Gaia in Shadow City, like the continent on the surface of Gaia is made of diamonds, or that a goddess resides there, or that the current Shadow City was actually carved out of Gaia. These baseless fancies always feel fresh and new, even though few of them are credible, I think they are sowhat a part of Shadow City’s culture: it’s the culture where various tribespeople make up stories about the Empire facilities around them to amuse themselves, then publish them as fairy tales and supernatural novels in their own world to earn money.
The alternation of day and night on the Mother Star’s surface follows the Empire’s standard ti. When Sandora and I left Avalon, twilight had just begun to descend, and by the ti we reached the Mother Star, it was cloaked in the glow of the evening sun. Because it is unaffected by the space environnt and also has a planetary shield with a filtering chanism, the sky on the Mother Star is artificially simulated just like in Shadow City. The planet’s manager had set a beautiful the pack for her ho today, the glow of the horizon was as perfect as a painting, beneath our feet, the silver-grey alloy ground stretched to the horizon, and in the opposite direction, the endless lush mountains reached the end of our sight. These scenes combined together surprisingly harmonized, even conjuring a sense of desolate vastness out of thin air.
Sandora always jokes that the Xyrin Apostles know nothing about art, but in my view, many things they create unintentionally are already enough to astound the naive human mind as magnificent wonders.
Currently, Sandora and I are near the equator of the Mother Star, on a small, roughly rectangular artificial continent. The facility Sister Gaia ntioned is right beneath this continent. We are standing on a plaza that seems to be an extension of a large facility complex, the alloy ground we’re on indicating it’s the base of a standard Imperial Base, while several kiloters behind us you can see giant silver-grey buildings shooting into the sky like orderly swords.
"That’s one of my redundant processing arrays, just established a few days ago," as my gaze fell onto those sword-like orderly buildings in the distance, a voice with an ethereal quality suddenly ca from beside , and I turned my head to see a pale blue semi-transparent figure standing next to . The slight rippling of light behind her hinted that this image was freshly projected, "I make improvents on the Mother Star during idle tis, enhancing my functions a bit. There are many large projects going on at the research center, Bubbles expressed that her model of the host is not adept at handling massive repetitive tasks, and my core architecture is designed specifically for these kinds of big data tasks, so I’m planning to help her and her host network share so of the data load. More arrays like this one are being established on the Mother Star—I should have reported this to you."
I pondered a bit, then recollected that I really saw a ntion of Gaia adding so modules to herself on the Mother Star in a report a couple of days ago, so I was enlightened: "Oh, that’s what you were talking about, I rember now, rember now, just didn’t expect those things to look like this after being built—you know, my impression of host facilities has always been like pyramids, I even thought you built yourself a new swarm."
Sister Gaia smiled, her body shimring faintly, "I can no longer use standard swarms like this, Your Majesty. Now I rely on self-designed auxiliary equipnt to work, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise. Without the constraints of a standard body, I feel my extensibility is many tis stronger than ordinary hosts; I can lay out extensions over the whole planet and use the planet’s Ghost Energy Wells to recharge myself, without worrying about overloading. Hmm, the only downside is I can’t use universal interfaces, and communicating with other hosts requires an adapter device. Luckily, now within the Empire, there are only two types of hosts, and Bubbles, so the adapter devices are simple."
I looked at Gaia, feeling that this topic was quite subtle. In my view, the beautiful phantom sister before wasn’t in a favorable state. Forever losing a body, not even allowed to use puppet limbs, being fixed on the planet only in the state of a program and soul, this was surely not sothing a wise creature would be happy about. Yet Gaia seed entirely unbothered by such a state, having lived like this for countless millennia, possibly continuing to do so forever, smiling and expressing contentnt in her capacity to keep working—perhaps she genuinely felt no regret, after all, I’ve conversed with her about this more than once, knowing she wouldn’t force a smile to comfort anyone: that’s not the style of a Xyrin Apostle. I can only say, the thought processes of different life forms are really very different, as soone who was... well, as a Void Creature, along with my vestiges of human worldview, it’s truly hard to comprehend the thinking process of a Xyrin Apostle.
In the end, I decided not to dwell on worldview issues for the ti being and brought up the crystal with Gaia: "Sandora and I ca to look at that big stone—you’ve settled it, I heard?"
Gaia showed a delighted smile: "Yes, Your Majesty, thank you for your effort, the Heart of the World has returned to its original position. I’ll lead you, the facility is just below here..."
As she finished speaking, Gaia’s projected body transford into a cascade of light, swiftly sinking beneath the alloy ground. Sandora and I exchanged glances: "Did she forget sothing?"
Monts later, sure enough, Gaia reerged, opening a teleportation gate while awkwardly smiling at Sandora and : "Oops, sorry Your Majesties, it’s been many thousands of years since I last led anyone into this place... I forgot."
I chuckled: "No worries, really, I’m used to it. At ho, when Anwina drags to see her newly researched dishes, she usually ends up dragging to crash into the kitchen wall every ti..."
Gaia stood stunned, a line of text appearing above her head: "Now Loading..."
I felt this was another manifestation of racial segregation!
The facility storing the crystal is deep underground, likely entering part of the mantle. Mother Star Gaia is a custom planet, its mantle exists as a storage point for facilities with high security demands. In this layer, there’s even a denser concentration of factories and data processing cores than on the Mother Star’s surface. We entered the underground world of the Mother Star through a surface teleportation gate, greeted by an unprecedented vast mantle space. Several kiloters above was a slightly concave alloy do, with sparse lighting and slowly shifting Ghost Energy Pipelines visible on the do; these likely constituted the physical parts of the energy network supplying energy to the surface facilities. And beneath the do was an endless mantle void stretching beyond sight, the void’s height likely reaching over ten kiloters, dark red magma surged deep below, an ordinary person would probably faint with just a glance downward in such an environnt. I couldn’t see any "ground" isolating people from the magma below, yet I was standing firmly on sothing; it appeared to be a transparent shield. I found this design to be quite mischievous, especially for those with a fear of heights, claustrophobia, fear of falling, pyrophobia, and agoraphobia — this place magically amalgamated all those nerve-wracking landscapes into one. It can only be said that Gaia indeed lacks human psychology; she modified this planet entirely by practical and convenient standards.
On this unseen "ground" beneath our feet, a series of large-scale buildings were arrayed, and Gaia explained the circumstances of this place to us: "This is the No. 1 Great Void, there are twenty such voids in the mantle section, the No. 1 Void is actually the smallest. The main part of the Sky Zone Data Center is stored here—of course, now this data center is about to undergo renovation because the Fifteenth Day Zone has been dismantled, and the structure of this data center no longer fits the current needs of the Imperial Dominions, so I plan to reorganize it entirely, allowing it to serve as a backup data repository for the research center in the future. As for the new data center of the New Imperial Dominions, Bubbles is still maintaining it. Hmm, the project will be completed very soon, and I have already begun construction, you can see it over there..."
Gaia led us into the air, swiftly flying past several gigantic data centers that looked like upright dominoes, then suddenly slowed down, pointing at a rectangular building not far away. I saw that the building’s exterior had been dismantled, revealing its intricate crystallized interior, dim Ghost Energy slowly flowing through the dazzling crystal grids, seemingly still operating, but in a minimal standby state. And on this "construction site," a group of Autonomous Machines was bustling about.
Autonomous machines are the most populous "residents" on Mother Star Gaia, Gaia regards them as her own children. I noticed a faint smile on Gaia’s face as she watched those bustling robots, then she pointed at the largest one, appearing to be the squad leader, among the Autonomous Machines and said: "Your Majesty, rember this one?"
"This is..." I was montarily stunned, but upon seeing the modification attachnts not fully removed from that Autonomous Machine, I imdiately reacted, "Ah, the one brought out from the ruins of that Old Empire Deep Dive Port! Is it operating once again?"
"It requested it itself," Gaia smiled, "The autonomous machines have simple minds, but they do possess basic thought processes. Even without personalities, they enjoy working. This one applied for a reboot on its third day here, and now it’s the best perforr."
I watched the small robot happily zipping back and forth below, helping dismantle the data center—well, perhaps it should be called a large robot—and felt a sense of reassurance. It seems to have returned to its favorite way of life.
"You really do keep busy every day." I glanced at Gaia and couldn’t help but comnt.
To be honest, Gaia’s presence has usually felt quite low-key next to . She cannot leave the Mother Star and naturally can’t attend any etings. The only thing visible on the Command Center’s desk from her is her reports, which might give people who don’t understand the wrong impression: that Gaia isn’t active in the Empire’s ruling body. But this is entirely misleading; on the contrary, Gaia’s daily busyness is no less than that of a workaholic like Sivis or Taville. She single-handedly manages the Mother Star, simultaneously overseeing the reconstruction of ancient facilities and central structures of the New Empire. As a powerful super Xyrin Host who has expanded nurous components, she also assists Bubbles and the mass-produced Bubble units with massive amounts of complex data tasks. In many areas not easily noticed by outsiders, Gaia diligently takes care of everything. You truly realize this only when you visit the Mother Star and see those bustling data centers and factories, and various renovation sites.
However, faced with my sigh, Gaia rely said calmly, "My idle system resources haven’t been fully utilized; I should find ways to accelerate the retrofitting of those ancient facilities on the Mother Star. The Fifteenth Day Zone’s defense control center also needs to synchronize with Shadow City Headquarters. It has many logical hosts still in good condition and shouldn’t remain idle. Hmm, my work efficiency needs further improvent..."
A standard Xyrin Apostle.
We arrived at the place where the crystals were stored.
This facility is located at the center of the underground hollow. The crystal’s storage facility looks similar to those surrounding data centers but is nearly twice the size, with a more complex surface structure. Even with limited knowledge of these data centers, I could guess that this building and the surrounding facilities might belong to the sa system. Gaia quickly confird this guess: The large rectangular building before us is the mainfra of the Fifteenth Day Zone data center from back in the day. It manages the entire hollow’s neatly distributed 122 servers, receiving information from all channels of the Fifteenth Day Zone. After initial processing, it sends the data according to different priorities to Gaia, various dedicated mainfra arrays, command centers and administrative departnts at all levels, and even the Sky Zone Emperor himself. Its function is similar to the current mass-produced Bubble mainfra arrays in Shadow City, although its capabilities are sowhat stronger. After all, the Fifteenth Day Zone back then... was larger than the entire present day New Empire (except for Macro World).
"Because we’ve lost the ability to mass-produce mainfras, I started manufacturing these large servers," Gaia explained the origins of these square facilities, which is also the reason for the abundance of data processing facilities beyond standard trics on the Mother Star. "Setting them up is a bit cumberso, not as user-friendly as mass-produced mainfras, and they lack construction capabilities. But since I can be infinitely expanded, connecting with these servers can significantly enhance their efficiency. As a result, this system has always run quite efficiently—its performance in certain batch repetitive data processing tasks even surpasses general Xyrin mainfra models. As for the construction work back then, it was handled by specially designed autonomous machines. Looking back, the tasks then were actually heavier than now..."
With Gaia’s introduction, we reached the core of this data center. What lay before us was a hall that initially seed ordinary, resembling so kind of computer room. In this large rectangular hall, roughly the size of two basketball courts, stood a significant amount of equipnt resembling tall cabinets. In the center of the hall was the newly returned gigantic crystal, hovering above a gravity-free platform that protruded from the ground, its middle indented. The crystal slowly rotated, reflecting unpredictable glows.
"This crystal was originally part of the data center."
Gaia appeared to activate so of the hall’s equipnt. I heard a low humming sound emanating from beyond the walls. Then the crystal’s slow rotation gradually halted, while bright blue beams resembling scan lines projected from beneath the gravity-free platform onto the crystal. Monts later, in the air before the platform, nurous holograms erged: complex graphs, unreadable machinery, and large segnts of text. This appeared to be a newly opened database.
"Isn’t this the Heart of the World?" Without thinking, I asked a rather foolish question, and naturally, before I could retract it, received a glare from Sandora: "So you really forgot what we told you—The Heart of the World is an invisible conceptual entity, an information entanglent point rely attached to so physical object. This crystal is the carrier of the Heart of the World, but why can’t it have its own functions?"
"I just didn’t react at first," I muttered awkwardly and, to dissolve the embarrassnt, refocused my gaze on Gaia, "This is probably so sort of database?"
The main functions of the data center are just twofold: temporarily storing information from all parts of the Sky Zone and processing them. The first impression this crystal gave was of the forr: Xyrin Technology indeed has quite a number of databases whose appearance looks simply like crystals.
Of course, the internal structure of these databases goes far beyond their outward simplicity.
"It has so core database functions, also featuring secondary cache and basic source instruction retrieval capabilities," Gaia nodded, "It’s one of the key components of the data center. Its capabilities are not limited to data temporary storage; it can be seen as a ’hard drive’ with information filtering authority—that might help you understand better."
"Oh..." I responded casually, slowly approaching the crystal that was in a direct read state, while recalling Sandora’s speculation:
This crystal seems to be conscious; it chose an escape route from the Old Empire itself.
I placed my hand on the crystal. It felt cool to the touch, with a slight tremor.
If you truly have consciousness, now that you’ve returned ho, could we communicate with you? (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, you’re welco to visit Qidian (qidian) to vote with recomndation tickets and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)
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