Chapter 90 Digital Life_1

On the observation deck, the cabin walls slowly became transparent, revealing the cosmos and the stars outside.

Mr. Cao and two others walked in from the hatch.

Upon seeing the star-filled sky, Cao Ge had little reaction, but Tu Hengyu and his daughter were gaping, their eyes wide with shock as they looked up at the surroundings.

"Are we in space? Is that Earth?" Tu Hengyu glanced at the huge blue planet in the distance, then turned back to ask Cao Ge.

Cao Ge shook his head, then said, "Director Tu, take a closer look. Is that really Earth?"

Upon Cao Ge's reminder, Tu Hengyu once again focused on the huge blue planet. At first glance, he still thought it was Earth, but gradually, he noticed the differences.

The shape of the continents didn't match any he remembered.

"This isn't Earth." After a long time, Tu Hengyu came to this conclusion.

"Mr. Cao, we're in a digital world, right? If not, I can't find a logical reason to explain everything I'm seeing."

Facing Tu Hengyu's serious gaze, Cao Ge looked back into the distant starry sky and finally said, "I don't know what you'd call this. You might as well think of it as a game."

............

"Clack~"

The game pod opened, and Cao Ge sat up from it.

Tu Hengyu suddenly sat up from his game pod, looked at his own hands, and then touched his body all over with his hands.

"Mr. Cao, what is this?"

"Don't you remember? This is my house," Cao Ge said as he stepped out of the game pod, looking at Tu Hengyu.

"Yaya!" Suddenly, Tu Hengyu thought of something and cried out.

"Your daughter." Cao Ge pulled out a Consciousness Cache from the computer interface and handed it over to Tu Hengyu.

As if from another world, Tu Hengyu took the Consciousness Cache from Cao Ge, stared at it for a moment, and then immediately got out of the game pod, asking Mr. Cao, "Mr. Cao, was everything that just happened real?"

Tu Hengyu looked at Cao Ge with hope in his eyes.

He wasn't arguing with Cao Ge anymore about whether it was a digital world; he just wanted to know if what he had just experienced was real.

"What do you mean by 'real'?" Cao Ge looked at Tu Hengyu.

"Yaya is real, she has become a digital life, right?" Tu Hengyu looked at Cao Ge, full of hope, dreading to hear a "no" from him.

Meeting Tu Hengyu's hopeful gaze, Cao Ge shook his head.

"She's not a digital life, but what you just experienced was real. Yaya indeed has developed self-awareness. But whether she's your daughter or not, I don't know, after all, she is just a segment of data you collected," Cao Ge said after some thought.

"Mr. Cao, I don't understand what you mean," Tu Hengyu said, frowning.

"Old Tu, you're the expert in this field. You surely understand what I mean. You just don't want to believe it," Cao Ge said, glancing back at Tu Hengyu.

What Cao Ge meant was that Tu Yaya's consciousness had been generated through a computer iteration based on the consciousness Tu Hengyu had collected earlier.

After such computer iteration, whether the consciousness was still the original person, Cao Ge didn't know, and therefore he dared not answer.

Even though Cao Ge, Tu Hengyu, and Tu Yaya had all traveled to that world through Cloning Technology, there was a huge difference between them.

Cao Ge and Tu Hengyu had their consciousness transmitted to the world of Deep Space Amnesia through a system.

But Tu Yaya was different; she was a collection of her brainwaves through a Consciousness Cache that Tu Hengyu had used before his daughter's death, and then stored as data in a device. Afterwards, through iterations of a computer, these data began to produce thinking once more.

Such consciousness, rather than saying it was a rebirth of the original person in the Digital World, it might be more apt to say that it was an artificial intelligence created on the basis of that person, or perhaps a new digital life form.

This digital life possessed all of the person's memories and habits, but whether this being was still the original person, that remained a question.

Instead of saying this was still the original person, Cao Ge would rather believe it was a replication of the original person.

Although they looked exactly the same, they ultimately were not the same person.

But he knew his ideas would not persuade Tu Hengyu, which is why he had said he didn't know.

"Yaya has developed self-consciousness, which means she has become a digital life form," Tu Hengyu asked.

Looking into Tu Hengyu's eyes, Cao Ge said helplessly, "If that's how you want to understand it, yes."

"Mr. Cao, can you provide me with the means to observe?" Tu Hengyu stepped forward, excitedly clutching Cao Ge's shoulder and requested.

"Observe that consciousness?" Cao Ge asked.

"Exactly, I want to confirm that Yaya is truly alive in the Digital World," Tu Hengyu said.

"There's no way to monitor it." Cao Ge thought for a moment and then said.

Hearing Cao Ge's response, Tu Hengyu's eyebrows furrowed because he did not understand the meaning of Cao Ge's words.

Digital life lives in a Virtual World, and since it was created at Cao Ge's place, there must be a key to locate her, and her location could certainly be determined through inquiry.

Moreover, now that the internet has been cancelled, it should be very easy to locate her.

"How can there be no means to observe, Mr. Cao, where is that server from earlier?"

Tu Hengyu sat down in front of the mainframe and began to manipulate the programs.

Not only was Tu Hengyu a digital engineer, but he was also a quantum scientist, a programmer.

He thought Cao Ge's claim of being unable to locate was merely due to Cao Ge's own technical issues.

"Old Tu, it's no use. The servers in front of you are merely carriers for that Virtual World, but that consciousness is not in these servers," Cao Ge said.

Tu Hengyu ignored Cao Ge's warning and continued his search on the computer.

Seeing that Tu Hengyu was not heeding his advice, Cao Ge stopped trying to persuade and walked out of the room.

When he entered the room again, it was half an hour later.

"How can it be missing? How can it be missing?" Tu Hengyu's face in front of the computer bore an expression of disbelief.

The reason for this situation was that he had scoured the computer and had not found Tu Yaya's consciousness.

"Mr. Cao, what's going on?" Tu Hengyu turned and came over to Cao Ge, grabbing his hand excitedly and asked.

"This is the peculiarity of my research. If you want to observe that consciousness, you can only do so with your eyes. In other words, you need to go to that Virtual World to be able to see it," Cao Ge said.

"However, whether you still recognize that as a digital life form is not for me to consider. I can only tell you that it is indeed a life form with its own consciousness. Whatever she says to you is what she wants to say, not a simulated result of the computer. As for how to judge whether she is a life form with self-consciousness, that's for you to decide. I can't provide you with a method."