MC Creative Mode: Wholesale Perpetual Motion Machine

Chapter 288 Return to Zero
"Of course I'm willing to deny this damn so-called 'first mover'!" Spider-Man clenched his fist and slammed it hard against his chest.

Fang Zheng looked at him quietly and asked in a low voice, "Even if this method might cause you to completely disappear from this universe and cease to exist, are you still willing?"

Thump! Thump! Thump! Spider-Man could clearly hear his heart pounding like a drum in his chest.

He closed his eyes, and countless images flashed through his mind in an instant.

The two children looked up at him with pure, unadulterated adoration in their eyes.

He donned the suit for the first time, fighting criminals on the streets as Spider-Man, and afterwards, the genuine gratitude in the eyes of those he rescued.

And then there are those thrilling moments when, as a member of the Avengers, I fought alongside my comrades to resist darkness and protect the world…

“I am Spider-Man! I am Peter Parker!” he roared.

The more he recalled those pure and warm memories, and the more he compared them to his later depravity and distortion as a "zombie," the more turbulent the hatred and anger accumulated in his heart became, almost tearing him apart.

"Perhaps, perhaps the birth of our entire universe, the so-called 'first cause,' was just an insignificant accident from the very beginning, merely a backdrop used to set the stage and provide context in that 'zombie crisis' story."

“But!” His voice suddenly rose.

Uncle Ben's smile, Aunt May's nagging, Mary Jane's gentleness, Sandman, Wolverine...

All the people and things that shaped him, warmed him, and defined his soul today—their trust and care, like warm currents, instantly flowed through his entire body and gathered in his chest.

"Even if the world we live in, and every life in it, is just a backdrop in some grand story, even if I am just a pawn designed to 'solve' the zombie crisis—our feelings, our anger, our love and hate, our friendship and bonds are all real! Every single one of them!"

He slowly opened his arms, as if to embrace this heavy and real world, and also as if to embrace himself. "Tell me, Fang Zheng, what exactly do you want me to do? What method can completely erase this damned 'First Mover' and prevent this damned zombie nightmare from ever happening again?"

“I know that even if our world has temporarily passed the crisis, as long as the root cause is not eliminated, as long as this ‘first mover’ is still there, the same tragedy will inevitably be repeated in other universes and on other timelines.”

“I know that we can try to go back in time, travel through space and time, to save those universes that are suffering.”

"But what's past is past, and nothing can undo it. Suffering is suffering, and tragedy is tragedy. Even if people living under the shadow of time are ignorant of everything that has changed after time has passed, we, those of us who are aware of all this, absolutely cannot accept this arrangement."

"Justice delayed is justice denied; it is merely a cleanup after the fact, a futile consolation. True salvation lies in nipping tragedy in the bud before it even occurs! This is the best and only correct choice!"

"Very good." Fang Zheng smiled and nodded.

He continued, "Actually, I originally wanted to handle it myself. However, my team is too large, and if I were to fully intervene, it would make the already open system of 'Zombie Heroes' even more difficult to control and unable to maintain the necessary closed nature."

"This will affect all the areas I've been involved in before, bringing some results I don't want to see." He paused, his gaze falling on Spider-Man.

"So, it seems that only you can complete this task, because you are the true protagonist of this 'zombie story' and the core of the story."

"Peter, do you understand symmetry breaking?"

"Of course I understand." Spider-Man nodded; he certainly understood this basic physics.

Fang Zheng continued to explain: "The vast majority of physical phenomena that we can observe are essentially due to symmetry breaking. Without this breaking, the universe would be completely silent, and no complex things or phenomena would appear."

"A perfectly homogeneous thing has zero complexity."

"A piece of white paper that has been completely blackened is essentially no different from a piece of white paper that has never been touched. An uncarved stone contains infinite possibilities to become any form of sculpture in the world."

"And the 'nothingness' I just showed you is probably this state of extreme uniformity."

"Absolute 'nothingness' is, in a sense, equivalent to absolute 'being' which contains all possibilities."

“Every thought you see has the potential to shape a complete universe from ‘nothingness.’ The thought itself is a disturbance to ‘nothingness,’ causing its symmetry to break, thus spontaneously giving rise to a world that perfectly matches the story described by the thought.”

"Your previous attempts to stop the zombie universe story from happening were essentially a form of self-reference, a disturbance that creates the universe."

“Every intervention, every ‘smearing’, is simply creating a new world from ‘nothingness.’ These new worlds are built on the foundation of the old world, and are an addition and expansion of the original ‘first mover’ story, forming a subset of a larger set…”

"So," Spider-Man stared intently at Fang Zheng, pressing for an answer, "what exactly is your solution?"

Fang Zheng smiled slightly: "The answer is simple. Since it's a case of symmetry breaking, we'll specifically 'fill' it in!"

"What?!" Spider-Man's brow furrowed instantly. "You mean... the antimatter universe?"

“Yes,” Fang Zheng nodded, his tone certain, “The idea is similar, but it’s not the kind of antimatter universe in parallel universes that you’re talking about in your cosmology theory.”

“If we consider ‘nothingness’ as a mirror, then this is, in the true sense, a reversed world of ‘anti-existence’ that is ‘opposite’ to your existence…”

“We need to completely shut down this ‘zombie story’ universe you’re in, turning it into an absolutely closed system. Then, we’ll perform a targeted time reversal.”

"In this way, we can completely erase all your existence, or rather, completely fill in the symmetry breakage you have caused."

“But…” Spider-Man’s face turned pale, and his brows furrowed even more. “If we do that, it will certainly completely erase the First Force of the universe and fill that broken symmetry.”

"But won't our own universe, all of us, along with all our memories, emotions, and history, completely lose their form of existence in this time reversal, vanish into nothingness, and return to that absolute 'nothingness'?" "In that case, even if the First Move is truly erased, wouldn't everything we have be equivalent to complete annihilation?"

Fang Zheng gently shook his head. "That depends on how you define 'life' itself."

As he spoke, he pulled two identical-looking cell phones from his pocket and held them out in his hands: "What's the essential difference between a person and a cell phone? Do you think these two seemingly identical cell phones are the same entity?"

"If I were to completely and precisely transfer the operating system and all the stored information from one phone to another, what would you call them then? Would they still be the original two phones?"

"Similarly, if a person's 'soul' is completely transferred into another person's body, then which one is 'him'—the original body or the body that receives the transfer?"

"To take it a step further, if there is no immortal and unchanging soul, and 'consciousness' is merely the result of some extremely complex algorithm, then when this consciousness algorithm is perfectly copied onto another carrier, which 'I' is the real 'I'?"

“This…” Spider-Man hesitated.

Fang Zheng already knew his reaction and continued, "I know what you want to say. You believe that 'continuity' gives meaning to 'me'. Only continuity is the essence of consciousness."

“I know that in your view, regardless of whether consciousness is copied, only the continuation of the previous consciousness is what you recognize as the same individual.”

"Different people have different views. My view is that 'the essence of man is the sum total of all social relations.'"

"So be it. Do you think that if you replace one cell in a person's brain every day, at an extremely slow, almost imperceptible rate, and after a long period of time, all the cells in their brain have been replaced one by one, you would deny that this person is still the same person they were before?"

"I..." Spider-Man opened his mouth, but no words came out. He remained silent for a moment.

“I understand,” he finally spoke, a hint of realization in his voice. “You mean, it’s possible for us not to simply ‘disappear,’ but to simultaneously create a new world while completely resetting the original world to nothingness, and then embedding this new world into that nothingness like an embedded program?”

“But…” Spider-Man frowned again, the logical dilemma making him uneasy. “If you really build an absolutely closed system, perhaps you can achieve self-reset. But to construct another completely new and complete system from scratch at the same instant of resetting to zero, and then perfectly embed it…”

"How is this possible? Isn't this a self-referential paradox?"

Just like a person can't lift themselves up by their own hair.

A closed system, without external interference, cannot change its own state, let alone create a completely new 'external' environment.

Faced with Spider-Man's answer based on human logic, Fang Zheng smiled and said, "You still haven't completely broken free from human thinking patterns. You've already seen my experiences, so you should have some understanding of what a 'perpetual motion machine' really is."

"However, you're not quite used to this kind of power that creates something from nothing."

Fang Zheng pointed to himself. "I am a perpetual motion machine, and so are you. Everything in the world is a perpetual motion machine."

"The process by which your universe has emerged and evolved to its present state is itself the result of the breaking of that initial symmetry, and it is also a manifestation of a perpetual motion machine that creates something from nothing."

"And a perpetual motion machine that can output infinite energy, or a super Turing machine with infinite computing power, can break the self-reference paradox."

"Just like the Gotham City you see, isn't that complex collection of scenes that merge together also a self-referential, self-circulating perpetual motion machine plus a super Turing machine?"

Fang Zheng looked directly into Spider-Man's eyes. "You are you, and I am me. If you wish, you too can transcend simple causal chains and engage in true self-reference, allowing 'you' as the core to determine 'your' future."

Before he could finish speaking, Fang Zheng sent a message to Spider-Man.

After Spider-Man deciphered it, he pondered for a moment, a dazed expression on his face: "So that's how it is... It's that simple?"

Fang Zheng nodded: "It's that simple."

"Then let's begin!" Fang Zheng said, then suddenly pressed his palm against his chest.

In the next instant, a phenomenon akin to self-destruction occurred.

The existence that constitutes the square itself begins to divide itself and reverse itself. Half of the "collection" begins to irreversibly fall into the other side of "nothingness," which may be called "anti-existence."

To completely erase the First Momentum, all the realities it influences—from time to space, from matter to energy, from information to causality—must be incorporated into an absolutely closed system, making it an isolated island completely cut off from the outside world.

However, simply closing off the "front" of this system is far from enough.

Its "opposite," the interface that exists in "anti-existence," if it remains open, then in subsequent inversion operations, energy and information may still dissipate, making it impossible to completely erase it from existence and leaving hidden dangers.

Therefore, it is necessary to completely close both the "positive" and "negative" interfaces simultaneously.

Only in this way can we ensure that the entire system, in the process of self-resetting, leaves no channel for interaction with "existence" or "nothingness".

Fang Zheng displayed extremely terrifying abilities at this moment.

He temporarily detached himself from his specific projection within this set, allowing his presence to instantly permeate every corner of the entire set, thus enabling him to manipulate it from a macroscopic, holistic perspective.

At the same time, he precisely locked onto the "anti-existence" interface corresponding to this set, as if tightening an invisible giant valve, sealing off both sides, front and back, reality and nothingness, and preparing for the next operation.

(End of this chapter)