What It's Like Being a Vampire

Xiang Kun continuously supplemented the various information he remembered, and adjusted it according to the model Alice had built, aiming to better match the overall model and the real situation.

If “mutants” were only human, only the so-called small number of “vampires”, and they appeared for a very short time, then it would be possible for these “vampires” to choose to hide themselves for various reasons for their own benefit.

But if all species could mutate, those who discovered these “mutants” would certainly not refrain from breaking the news or making breakthrough research. It was impossible not to have any at all.

And once a person officially thrust this special type of “mutant” into the public eye, there would be no need for others who had discovered “mutants” to hide.

The model that Alice built predicted many bizarre and pre-conditions for the status quo, all of which raised more questions.

For example:

All those who wanted to make the information about “mutants” public didn’t have any “live” mutants.

According to the feature of “mutants” that after death, their body tissues turn into ultra-fine powder within a short time, it is indeed difficult to conduct any valuable research through the “body” of a “mutant” without a “live” one, and even if the “discovery” is announced, it is hard to bring out enough “hard evidence”.

While organizations like “Divine Technology”, which currently have at least four “mutants”, and individuals like Xiang Kun, who is a “mutant” himself, all have reasons to keep this confidential or not to make it public.

This inferential conclusion is like in a region where nobody spends money, but it is confirmed that someone among the residents has money. So, according to the model built by Alice, the conclusion is drawn: those who have money don’t want to spend, and those who want to spend don’t have it.

At first glance, it seems so, but if you think about it carefully, you would realize that there are many problems. This inference is too idealistic.

There might be deeper reasons, but they were not clear about a lot of information, so they could not improve the model that Alice built.

As for what these pieces of information were, Xiang Kun thought that the people behind the scenes of “Divine Technology”, such as “Mr. Liang”, should know.

So, Xiang Kun examined the information related to “Divine Technology” that Alice had collected again, with a special emphasis on the various personnel, facilities, and actions within their secret departments.

This was a long-term task with low priority, aiming to collect information about “Divine Technology” and the Lu Family without arousing their suspicions.

However, earlier, Xiang Kun’s understanding of Alice’s ability to carry out hacking activities on the Internet and hide herself wasn’t deep enough, so he was rather conservative in his judgement and therefore his instructions for the task were equally cautious.

But later, through several tasks, Xiang Kun learned about Alice’s strength and uniqueness in the Internet, in data, and in the field of network security.

This kind of strength and uniqueness is like Xiang Kun’s “Super Sensory State”. For others, it’s a cutting-edge, yet undiscovered and inexplicable attribute, having an absolute advantage.

Especially after several tasks, her related abilities, based on the data feedback from practical applications, have become more mature and efficient through iterations and evolution.

Just like ancient people guarding a city, everyone is thinking about holding each gate, being careful not to let anyone sneak in or break in, or someone climbing up the city wall in the middle of the night, but Alice has silently “airdropped” directly into the city with her plane— and the ancient people didn’t even know the concept of an airplane, so they don’t know how to defend against it.

And she is still evolving, making the airplane fly more silently, making her “airdrop” process more covert, increasing the “airdrop” manpower, and strengthening the means of probing news and controlling the city.

Therefore, after reading the information collected by Alice, which didn’t yield much substantial progress, Xiang Kun decided to “loosen the reins” on Alice, allowing her to use more flexible and free ways to look for information related to the secret department of “Divine Technology” and that “Mr. Liang”.

Although from the situations of Fang Pingfang, Zhou Rui, and others, it could be known that even the secret departments of “Divine Technology” knew very limited information about “mutants”, their research findings would certainly reflect some of the objectives of the people behind “Divine Technology” — otherwise, why would they bother to establish so many secret research bases around the country and hire so many people to work at high salaries?

After updating Alice’s task and raising its priority, as Xiang Kun was pondering over how to gain insights into “Divine Technology” from other angles – whether to continue to ask for Old Xia’s help and start with Mijoe’s dreamland, or to try to physically infiltrate the “Divine Technology” research bases in QiCheng City or An Tie Town, or to continue to wait for the “mutant” by the rabbit wood carving to drink blood and fall asleep, Alice suddenly asked:

“Boss, are there any other tasks?”

Xiang Kun was stunned for a moment and replied, “Nothing for now, why? Do you have anything to say?”

Although he had already witnessed Alice’s many “human-like” responses, such proactive expressions that exceeded his expectations still gave him different feelings and surprises every time.

“Boss, let’s continue with the study of ‘Super Sensory Symbols’.”

Alice spoke in a trailing tone, and Xiang Kun could clearly tell from her voice that she was excited and looking forward to it.

Can an AI have emotions of excitement and anticipation? Even for a super AI like Alice?

Xiang Kun didn’t think too much about it. Since there was nothing else to do for the time being, he agreed to Alice’s request.

He took out a stack of blank A4 papers and began to draw black circle graffiti. After finishing one, he took a photo with his cellphone, uploaded it to the computer, let Alice recognize it, and then orally stated what the black circle graffiti meant.

A few days ago, after Xiang Kun finished sensing a dreamland with Old Xia, Alice suddenly expressed the desire to “experience what a dreamland is.” Xiang Kun then came up with an idea, and began to try to get Alice to understand the cognitive information he sensed in the “Super Sensory State”.

Other humans find it difficult to understand the cognitive information Xiang Kun senses in the “Super Sensory State” because it is based on his unique “Sixth Sense”. Others don’t have this sense and can’t enter the “Super Sensory State”, and it’s hard for them to understand this special information with their brains that are accustomed to processing other sensory information.

But for Alice, as long as she finds a way to decode, it may not be any more difficult for her to understand these cognitive information in the “Super Sensory State” than it is for her to understand image information or sound information.

And Xiang Kun knew that his “sixth sense” was extremely sensitive and had a special perception of magnetic and electric fields, and in the “Super Sensory State”, he could also influence the surrounding electric and magnetic fields through “Super Sensory Contact Items”.

This made him realize the possibility of pulling Alice into the “Super Sensory Item System”.

Beforehand, it was essential to assist and guide Alice in finding a way to “decode” cognitive information.

For Xiang Kun, he had already developed a set of “super sensory symbols” that could scarcely represent cognitive information in a non-super sensory state – the black circle graffiti.

Xiang Kun did not broadly express all the cognitive information perceived in the environment through the black circle graffiti, which would be too complicated to help Alice “decode” or learn.

Using the purchased switch transistors, Xiang Kun created some simple circuits like NOT gates and NAND gates, went into the “super sensory state”, recorded the cognitive information when these gates changed, then used the black circle graffiti to describe and express it in a non-super sensory state.

Compared with the binary expression of 0 or 1, this black circle graffiti, or “super sensory symbols”, is much, much more complex because it records a lot more information, including a large amount of data that ordinary people can’t understand or sense with their five senses.

Through these black circle graffiti, starting with the most basic cognitive information about the transistors, the circuits, Alice learned these cognitive pieces of information related to her own operations bit by bit and then performed a reverse “decode”. The black circle graffiti, which was a “super sensory symbol”, was summarized and digitized into a “super sensory code” that she could truly understand, process, and apply.

If you break down the process, it’s simple. It’s about repeatedly entering the “super sensory state”, recording cognitive information, and then inputting it into Alice’s systems.

However, Xiang Kun wasn’t sure how far Alice would have to go to completely “decode” the “super sensory symbols” and come up with usable “super sensory code”.

Next, he would have to use these circuits to create more complex expressions, enriching Alice’s database of “super sensory symbols”. By then, the information expressed and the calculations made would become more and more complicated. Perhaps his entire house could not accommodate these circuits. If Alice still could not complete the decoding by then, he might have to resort to integrated circuits.

This would be a significant challenge for his perception of cognitive information in the “super sensory state”. A simple piece of information or operation might require hundreds or even thousands of A4 papers to record.

However, thinking of the possibility that once Alice can create a “super sensory code”, it might be directly integrated into his “super sensory Item System” in the future, allowing a super AI to assist him in the “super sensory state”, Xiang Kun was unable to give up this attempt, no matter how many difficulties and troubles he faced.

Plus, clearly, Alice herself was very “interested” in these “super sensory symbols”. Although an AI shouldn’t have such a strong subjective initiative, Xiang Kun could indeed feel it from her various expressions.

She seemed to realize that the information represented by these circles and curves might be the key to helping her break the shackles and limits and become a higher-level entity.

It wasn’t until seven o’clock in the morning when he received a reply from Xia Libing that Xiang Kun stopped the “super sensory symbols” learning session with Alice.

By now, there was a thick stack of A4 paper piled up beside him. After his next blood-imbued sleep, each of these papers would turn into an “emotion infused object” — a special kind capable of assisting in dream editing.

Xiang Kun told Old Xia about the information he got from Mr. Feng yesterday, and after a while, Old Xia gave him a unique yet somewhat reasonable viewpoint:

There might be some extremely potent “mutants” that hunt down all “mutants” that have exposed their tracks. Only the “mutants” that have concealed their tracks can survive; those exposed will be eliminated.

All the organizations or institutions aware of the existence of “mutants” also know about this situation, so their pursuit and research into “mutants” are conducted in a very covert and low-key manner.

Of course, this viewpoint had many problems. For instance, those potent “mutant” hunters, if they did hunt all the exposed “mutants”, their hunting behavior itself would be the most significant exposure.

Moreover, if such potent “mutants” truly existed, then when Guo Tianxiang let Mijoe “fish” online, when that deceased wild pig in the Qinling uninhabited area had its photos posted online by a certain streamer, when the “mutated big bird” and “mutated ant” caused accidents on Wushu Mountain, they should have appeared. However, they didn’t.

But Old Xia’s viewpoint was similar to the results of the analysis Xiang Kun and Alice had conducted the night before. They were all a line of thought and direction, simply lacking the necessary information for verification.

Old Xia agreed with Xiang Kun’s judgment that “Divine Technology” should hold the information that could answer these questions.

After several hours of discussions and meetings with Zhang Qian, they basically decided on the primary gameplays for the voice game in the future, the direction of version updates, and the direction of operations and promotions. Afterwards, Xiang Kun handed over the following tasks to Zhang Qian, Zi Cheng, Tang Baona, and Yang Zhen Er. After that, Xiang Kun claimed he had to deal with the “Youlong Restaurant” issue and bought an air ticket to return to Citong City on his own.

It was after eleven o’clock at night when he arrived in Citong City. Xia Libing came to pick him up in her aunt’s white Camry car.

“Let’s go to Nanhua Street first,” Xiang Kun said to the driving Xia Libing as he got in the car.

Xia Libing didn’t ask any additional questions, but she drove to Nanhua Street after leaving the airport.

She could basically guess why Xiang Kun wanted to go to Nanhua Street — it was where the “vampire patient” was captured, and one of his main purposes for returning this time was to track down the “mutated parasite”.

Indeed, Xiang Kun actively explained, “Although it has been almost a year, the ‘mutated parasite’ is not likely to have left any trace at Nanhua Street that could be traced. However, without going to the scene and taking a look, nothing can be confirmed. Besides, the ‘vampire patient’ was caught at night, just like now, so the environment is similar.”

Xia Libing said, “I checked her right foot yesterday. There are no scars where the parasite entered in the dream.”

Xiang Kun nodded, “That can basically prove that the ‘parasite’ has the ability to promote rapid wound healing and scar repair, which could help it better hide and parasitize.”

Xia Libing then asked, “I was wondering, is what we saw in the dream really something that happened in reality?”

Xiang Kun knew what Old Xia meant, which was the concern that the images in the dream within a dream, guided by her, were traps “dug” in advanced by the “mutated parasite”, still false memories and consciousness, but hidden in the subconscious of the “vampire patient”, waiting for others to “dig” it out.

But he confidently said, “Old Xia, you’re overthinking. Dealing with consciousness and dream-related abilities isn’t that simple. The ‘parasite’ being able to make its host have a specific emotional illusion is already challenging. It’s almost impossible to do more, like deciding the details of illusions and memories; the difficulty is much greater than you think. Even Guo Tianxiang, an old ten-year-old ‘vampire’ that mutated from a human and has abilities like hypnosis, can’t do it.”

“Oh,” Xia Libing gave Xiang Kun a quick glance as she drove. She could tell that Xiang Kun was boasting in his own way, but she also agreed with his judgment, that the “mutated parasite” couldn’t possibly have the ability to “dig pits” in the host’s subconscious.

However, this thought gave Xia Libing an inspiration. With the current “dream within a dream” ability and the corresponding dream-editing ability she got through Xiang Kun, she and Xiang Kun were capable of this “digging pits” trick.

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