Did the world end today?

Chapter 401 Residual Charge
The defect is man-made.

This conclusion was not unexpected by Lin Xu.

After all, he had seen it in the previous "War World" where humans restarted their civilization by creating defects.

but.
The situation currently facing the world of Destiny Stones is different from that of the world of War.

Clearly, given the previous stages of civilization's development, the humans of the Destiny Stone world were absolutely incapable of creating defects.

Going back tens of thousands, or even hundreds of millions of years, no so-called "prehistoric civilization" could have achieved this.

That means that this defect can only be a remnant from the "previous cycle".

Qin Shizhong's account was verified; after the complete confrontation, he seemed to have nothing left to hide or attempt to mislead.

He had already gone all in.

Therefore, based on the judgment that "the defect comes from the previous cycle", the metaphor of "Turritopsis dohrnii" becomes more reasonable.

The question is, how exactly was this done?
What is the purpose of leaving humanity with a defect?
Is it merely so that the human species can be reborn after the reboot?

Ayana was unable to bring Lin Xu back a more concrete answer.

She has been able to “exploit” flaws like Qin Shizhong has – within a very limited scope.

She could even control the triggers that Qin Shizhong had already set.

But she gained almost nothing in terms of deeper information.

In fact, the information she brought back was full of fragments that resembled "hallucinations".

In the office, Lin Xu held a newly compiled document, which was described by Ayana and Yu Shiliang and deciphered by top linguists and cryptographers from various countries using exhaustive algorithms on quantum computers.

The document contains an astonishing 4,600 symbols, but even with the aid of quantum computers, no more than 20 of them are meaningful.

"Fragments".

"joint."

"Numbers up to 10."

"A noun referring to 'human beings' or the individual."

"end."

"High-dimensional channels".

"Nouns that refer to defects, but whose actual usage is uncertain."

That's all for now.

Lin Xu sighed deeply, and then said:

"All other meaningful symbols are actually not very meaningful, because terms like 'high dimension,' 'defect,' and 'number' are actually independent and will inevitably appear in this context."

"We have no way to deduce other terms from these terms; we can only identify them from the fragments themselves."

"There are only two truly meaningful words—fragments and union."

Lin Xu's finger swept across the document, pointing to two nouns that were highlighted.

Following the direction of his finger, Jiang Xingye's gaze also stopped there.

Debris
joint
It seems that Qin Shizhong had mentioned the word "fragments" at the beginning.

For a considerable period of time, the working group believed that the so-called fragments referred to the world fragments separated by the limiter array and the high-dimensional overflow.

But if that's really the case...
What's the point of leaving this message here in this form?

It doesn't just occupy a simple "character position." After eliminating a large amount of meaningless gibberish, the information entropy occupied by this single term accounts for a considerable proportion of all the information Ayana brought back.

In other words, if humanity in the previous cycle truly left behind information about "crossing the apocalypse," then this term is the key.

Clearly, information such as higher-dimensional overflows and world fragments alone is insufficient to support such expectations.

It must also refer to something more complex.

But what exactly is it?
"Do you have any ideas?"

Lin Xu's voice pulled Jiang Xingye from her reverie, and she shook her head in reply:
"No."

"When it comes to defects, I don't seem to receive any information from higher dimensions."

“It’s strange—in fact, I still have some ‘feelings’ from time to time, in terms of technology, in terms of the future, and in terms of experiences with the development of other worlds.”

"I'm certain this information comes from you, and I'm also certain this information comes from higher dimensions."

“I have been reporting this information, but in the current environment, the importance of this information is decreasing, so it has not gone through you.”

"However, there are absolutely no defects."

Not even a tiny bit.

Jiang Xingye's expression was a mixture of confusion and regret. Lin Xu patted her hand reassuringly and said:
"It's ok."

"You've done your best."

"Something about that sounds off."

Jiang Xingye was both amused and exasperated, while Lin Xu laughed heartily and continued:

"That's called returning the favor verbatim—but let's not talk about that now."

"Our current problem is that if we want to figure out exactly what the defect does, we must first analyze all the information about the defect."

"This batch of garbled text is obviously meaningful, but we haven't found a truly effective way to unlock it yet."

"What we need to do is find that method."

"Yes."

Jiang Xingye nodded slowly.

"Just like how we found the general solution to chaotic systems—do you think it's possible that this flaw is actually a more complex chaotic system?"

"Theoretically speaking, it can't be that simple."

Lin Xu shrugged and said:
“Chaotic systems are difficult for classical computing, but if we are only trying to obtain a finite solution, quantum computers can achieve quite satisfactory results with extremely limited computing power.”

"But you see, we also introduced quantum computing in this decoding, but the results were not satisfactory."

"This proves that the complexity of this batch of information surpasses that of ordinary chaotic systems."

"It belongs to a higher-dimensional problem, and it might even be..."

"and many more."

Jiang Xingye suddenly interrupted Lin Xu and continued:

Is it possible that this gibberish actually has no meaning at all?

"what?"

As soon as Jiang Xingye finished speaking, Lin Xu froze on the spot.

He had never imagined this possibility.
-
nonsense!

If this defect at the boundary is truly information left behind by humanity in the previous cycle through countless hardships, how could it be completely meaningless?

Leaving behind too much meaningless information will only make things more difficult for those who come after.

This is absolutely not something a rational civilization would do.

Seemingly noticing Lin Xu's confusion, Jiang Xingye let out a soft breath and then said:

"I've realized that we seem to have entered a blind spot."

"We have always believed that human actions are absolutely rational, absolutely precise, and absolutely reliable."

"But that's not the case—you should know that humans are not omnipotent."

"Even our civilization, blessed by butterflies, is not omnipotent at this moment."

"Moreover, butterflies may not have even existed in the previous cycle."

"They went through painful exploration and long iterations, which meant they could not possibly do everything perfectly."

"Especially under the pressure of the apocalypse, they will instinctively pursue survival."

"It's even possible that they made the decision to 'abandon themselves and continue civilization' at the very last moment before the apocalypse, right?"

“Yes.” Lin Xu nodded in realization.

Jiang Xingye is right—in fact, this is not a "deduction," but rather an inevitable law.

Lin Xu had never seen a civilization that existed for the purpose of destruction.

Even in the shattered world of the Alliance era, people there only turned to fully support Butterfly's desperate fight after realizing that survival was hopeless.

If they are like this, then other civilizations are certainly like this as well.

Such a choice inevitably leads to the emergence of "noise".

"So you mean that of all the information in the defect, the only ones that are truly meaningful are the words we've already decoded?"

"That's not it."

Jiang Xingye shook his head again.

Then she began to speak:
"The functionality of 'defects' is far more than just conveying information—and certainly not just having some kind of joke-like impact on the real world, as Qin Shizhong has done."

"Its true function must be hidden in the chaotic flow of information."

"However, we must eliminate all noise interference as much as possible."

"And to do that, we must first confirm one thing."

"So that's where all this noise comes from."

At this point, Jiang Xingye changed the subject.

She looked at Lin Xu and asked:
"If it were you, where do you think these noises are coming from?"

Lin Xu was taken aback at first, then answered almost instinctively:

"Residual charge".

"That's right!"

Jiang Xingye's eyes lit up.

"First, we need to clarify one point—the so-called residual charge is essentially just a metaphor, right?"

"Yes, it's a metaphor, of course."

Lin Xu nodded without hesitation.

The so-called residual charge actually refers to the charge remaining in the RAM cells after the computer restarts. It has not completely disappeared. If the power is turned on again, some memory cells may be in an unstable "intermediate state".

And this "intermediate state" is, in a sense, a state of being.
It is also a flaw.

After receiving confirmation from Lin Xu, Jiang Xingye continued:
"Then we've reached a consensus."

"Although we don't yet understand the specific mechanisms of the universe restarting, we can abstract it into a process similar to a computer restarting—an analogy, right?"

"Yes."

Lin Xu nodded again.

He had already understood Jiang Xingye's meaning.

If the universe really is restarting again and again, and at extremely short intervals, is it possible that during the restarting process, there is some kind of "residual charge" on the "carrier" that carries the universe?
Is it possible that these residual charges eventually constitute a "defect"?
Of course it's possible.

It is even quite possible that the humans of the previous cycle used this mechanism to leave information for the next cycle.

Before Jiang Xingye could continue, he impatiently spoke up:

"Therefore, if we are supported by this theory, the most crucial point in eliminating distracting noise and analyzing the essence of the defects is..."

"Time sequence."

They both spoke at the same time.

As soon as the neat voices fell, Lin Xu immediately stood up.

"First, we need to determine a standard timing sequence."

"We need to know when the last cycle ended."

"We must clearly calculate the age of the universe, and then work backward from this timeline to find the changes and transformations of the so-called 'residual charge' over a long period of time."

"Then, we need to replicate this defect and reset it to its initial state."

"etc."

"I feel like this is an impossible goal to achieve."

Jiang Xingye subconsciously scratched his hair.

indeed.

To achieve everything Lin Xu described, humanity would need an astronomical amount of computing power.

Even if all the resources of the entire universe were exhausted, it would most likely be impossible to completely restore the flaw.

Is there an even simpler way?

Jiang Xingye fell into deep thought, but at that very moment, Lin Xu suddenly spoke:
"I see."

"It doesn't actually need to be that complicated."

"There is a crucial piece of information here that I overlooked."

"Humans can intentionally create defects, and the defects they create can transcend the end of the world."

"In that war-torn world, they did it."

"They must also face the problem of residual charge decay and change, but they are able to solve it."

"In other words, they must have a relatively 'universal' method to 'reset' the charge."

"If we can find this universal method, we can largely complete the analysis of the flaws in the world we live in."

Even if it can't be fully analyzed, it will at least save us a lot of time.

"That's right!"

Jiang Xingye's eyes lit up.

"Do you want to try it now?"

Give me two hours.

Lin Xu answered without hesitation.

He got up and walked to the lounge, then immediately touched the bracelet and entered another world.

Outside the door, Jiang Xingye had already sat down again.

She recorded the entire process of her discussion with Lin Xu in her notebook.

She knew that this information would become an important basis for the subsequent analysis of the "defect".
An hour later, Lin Xu returned from another world.

Two hours later, he completed the framework output of the defect analysis method for "World of War".

Just as he and Jiang Xingye had predicted, the core element this civilization used to infer the "state of residual charge loss" was the so-called "time sequence".

Their analysis method is actually quite simple and straightforward.

"Quantum state tomography".

They painstakingly used massive amounts of resources to build a model that could roughly restore the "initial state" through the "residual charge status".

This model also applies to the flaws of the Destiny Stones world.

the reason is simple.

Civilizations that have reached this stage will all arrive at the same conclusion, regardless of their technological advancements or design schemes.

The speed at which the defects were analyzed far exceeded Lin Xu's expectations.

After the model was submitted, the first "feedback" contained in the defects appeared before everyone.

This feedback is actually more like an "initial code" injected into the universe.

The content of the code is
"Large water droplets carry a positive charge, while small water droplets carry a negative charge."

(End of this chapter)