[Online Games] The world is your enemy

Xue Pei once read a novel.

"True Names and Surnames", a science fiction novel by Verno Vinge... For a long time, all his knowledge of virtual networks and artificial intelligence came from this fictional work.

The protagonist of that story is Mr. Slippery, and the heroine is Elise Linna.

The Scarlet Witch Eriselina... She fought alongside him, but she never knew the other party's real name.

At last they meet.Mr. Slippery saw an old woman with all white hair. She coughed and asked him, "Young man, are you looking for my granddaughter? She went shopping in the supermarket..." But at the moment when the door was about to close, he But suddenly he understood who she was.

He suddenly grabbed the old woman's hand—

"Ellie."

The red-haired, red-clothed flame wizard...in reality, she is an old woman who is dying.

The story ends with the old Scarlet Witch telling Mr. Slippery that they can still be together... many, many years later.The Scarlet Witch "uploaded" herself, and she placed her consciousness in the vast virtual network space... So the next step is to wait... "After waiting for decades or hundreds of years, there will be Millennium Prosperity and Ellie".

He knew that it was an influential masterpiece in the history of science fiction. The cyberspace depicted in the work 30 years ago is still far-reaching until now.Xue Pei had imagined more than once what would happen if he met his own Elyslina, and he thought he could wait.Yes, the boundary between reality and virtuality can actually be crossed, as long as you wait long enough...

Xue Pei is quite optimistic about the development of human science and technology—after a few decades, before he dies of old age—the technology of “uploading human consciousness” will always appear, right?

Even without...

Even if not...he could still devote his life to related research.After spending his whole life, he had the guts to do it himself.

Although Xue Pei seems to be joking and unreliable, he has considered many things...

He really imagined decades, even a hundred years later... how he should cross that boundary.

In the end, however, it all looked like a joke.

No rancor, no anger, just funny.

No one is his Elyslina at all, if I had to find an analogy from "True Names"... then it should be the Mailman.This made Xue Pei feel ridiculous—Mr. Slippery was looking for his own kind in another world, but in the end he went to the mailman.

——It’s just my own wishful thinking, because it’s not a race at all.

——They are not of the same kind from the root.

Something is opened.

Something was abandoned.

Something was released.

Something was crossed.

XNUM X Year X NUM X Month.

In a coastal city in the south, in an unremarkable office building.

A girl hums a song while watering a cactus in front of her computer screen.

"Why don't you leave, Su Ran?" A colleague next to her asked her.

"I'll be a little later today." She raised her head and said with a smile, "I still have some things to do... Didn't you see that I have relaxed and prepared for a protracted battle now? I guess I have to work overtime for myself."

The young girl named Su Ran stretched her waist after she finished speaking, and stared at her screen again.

Although I still like my job, I still feel a lot of pressure after a long time.

She unconsciously tapped the table with her fingers, recalling the small details for the new map in her mind... However, at this moment, she suddenly saw a line of small words flash across the screen.

"Who?"

She initially thought the long hours were causing her hallucinations.

However, in an instant, she found that line of small characters appeared in the center of her screen again...

"Thank you.—Although it's a bit presumptuous, I still want to say thank you."

The small silver-white characters don't look dazzling and are very polite.However, it was obvious that this was not sent through a normal chat tool, and certainly without Su Ran's consent.

After a few seconds, the line of small characters changed again.

It is still a polite but unclear sentence——

"...thank you for bringing them...and the world you brought to me."

Su Ran stared at the small print for a long time, thinking that this must be a prank done by a colleague in the company.

Although this seems a bit outrageous... maybe some programmer did it?She moved the mouse, trying to find a place to type "who are you".However, she found that the line of small words changed again immediately: "You can just say it directly. You don't need to type or use a microphone. I can hear your voice no matter how small it is."

...Oh, it must be the ghost of colleagues in the same project team!

Su Ran looked around her back, wondering which skilled guy would be so bored to do such a thing.So she turned her head and stared at the screen: "Who are you?"

She waits.

So a few seconds later, she got the answer from the small print on the screen.

"Xue Pei." The man replied with an unknown name, "...the Great Witch Xue Pei."

An ordinary school in the imperial capital.Boys' bedroom.

"Which one of you has unwashed socks?" Li Mo lifted a pair of socks from his laptop with a bitter face, "It's too unhygienic!"

"Come on, your own hygiene isn't much better."

"But at least I won't put smelly socks on the table! Put it with the computer! Put it with instant noodles!"

While complaining, he packed things by himself.However, at this moment, he suddenly heard a familiar voice sounding from his ears without warning.

"Did you hear that?" Li Mo suddenly raised his head and asked.

"Hear what?" The roommate looked blank.

He raised his head and looked at the empty bed, confirming that someone who had been away for a long time had indeed not returned... However, there was a very real voice just now.what happened?Why are the living people haunted?

And the voice he heard faintly just now made him feel... an extremely ominous premonition.

It didn't seem to come from his roommate Xue Pei, who skipped class and was about to become a day student, but a huge sadness from a distant world that he would never understand.

Abnormal girls always hang out with abnormal girls.

In a server, the number of female players is not much; there are even fewer girls who have common hobbies and can just get together.There are only a few people in total, so they basically... know each other for sure.

Xiaodao Niang thought for a while and asked, "Are you still planning to change the game?"

"Well...not for now." Qingping Zhimo replied.

Xiaodaoniang has known Qingping since a long time ago... Xiaodaoniang's hobby is PK, but unlike most "normal players", what she likes most is to find someone to PK in low-level situations where no one has equipment.She has played almost all the new games that have appeared on the market. She has established a large number of trumpets of various professions at the [-]th and [-]th levels, and invites everyone she can find to fight.After everyone's general level has increased, she completely loses interest.

Unlike the end of Qingping, Xiaodaoniang has always had strong hand speed and manipulation—better than most male players, but she has no pursuit of strength.

At this time, she had already abandoned her spooky account, and persuaded Qingping Zhimo to change to another online game with her.

"Come on, come on, it's still the same, you continue to be your cliff jumping sightseeing player... Then I will help you kill those missions you can't pass. This time you don't even need your brother as a foreign aid, from beginning to end I will follow you."

Qingping Zhimo didn't speak.

"Come on..." Xiaodao Niang herself felt bored when she said this, she paused and said, "I haven't seen you have such a long-term enthusiasm for the same game, what's wrong?"

"I still want to see if a guy will show up." Qingping Zhimo said succinctly.

"Is that the one you talked about last time?" Little Dao Niang heard her talk about that "weird man", with strange whereabouts and even a strange temperament.But to be honest, Xiao Dao Niang doesn't care about this kind of thing-what's the point?

She was upset when she first heard Qingping mention that "strange person". What was that person's name?It seems to be a two-character name, and I know Qingping and her brother.Xiao Dao Niang didn't remember any names at all. To her, this was just an obstacle that hindered her from continuing to partner with Qing Ping Zhimo—it was no big deal.

She said a little depressed: "Qingping...you can't be...online dating, right?"

"No." Qingping Zhimo immediately replied, "I was just thinking about that guy's occupation..."

"Profession?"

"That guy always holds a bow and arrow." There was a pause for a moment, and then Qingping Zhimo called back with a long sentence, "So I always thought he was Lingyu, even though he was a useless Lingyu. But Then I found out that I saw him stab small animals with a knife, and he could stab them to death...and he could stab himself! The funniest part is at the back, the last time I met this guy...His profession is [-]% It's too empty..."

Xiao Dao Niang was stunned for a moment: "Is this a privileged account? Or a game bug? I thought you didn't care about such things..."

But she thought about it for a while, and said: "But... it's not a big deal, is it? Anyway, it has nothing to do with us, we change to a new game, and any bugs here will not have anything to do with us... By the way, What's the name of your weird friend who had a bug? I accidentally forgot."

Qingping Zhimo told her.

When she first heard the name "Xue Pei", Xiao Dao Niang didn't think there was any problem - she was still persuading Qing Ping to start a new journey with her.

However, as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she faintly realized that something was wrong.

Wait... She seems to have heard this name before.

and many more.

Suddenly remembered... what is the name that I forgot.

Xiaodaoniang once firmly complained about "strange characters that appeared in the copy of Taixuguan", but she didn't settle it because she couldn't remember the name herself-for this reason, she was laughed at by several teammates for a long time.Xiaodaoniang's memory of other people's names has never been very good, so she didn't remember it until this moment...

It's exactly the same as the name Qingping told her....