Chapter 31: Dreamscape: Alien Civilization

Over the past few days, as Du Qiu sorted through the technological knowledge gained in his dreams, he became increasingly convinced that the super machine he encountered in his dreams was a device from an alien civilization.

This alien civilization’s technology must have reached levels beyond what human beings on Blue Star could imagine.

They have achieved atomic-level perfection in material processing and have reached the level of photon computing or even quantum computing in the field of computers…

If all this still falls within the realm of technology comprehensible to humans of Blue Star, then the consciousness technology related to dreams is something that completely exceeds their understanding.

With just a crystal pillow, human beings of Blue Star can be pulled into dreams, allowing their conscious minds to traverse the endless expanse of the universe and connect to their super machines.

For the people of Blue Star, this is nothing short of a miracle.

Who would have thought that humanity could have a third kind of encounter with an alien civilization in dreams!

But Du Qiu knows that there must be objective scientific truth behind it all, even though he is still entirely ignorant of it now.

Now that he is certain that his dreams contain an alien civilization, Du Qiu really wants to use the super machine’s sensory system to see what the intelligent life form of this alien civilization looks like.

After all, what would a third encounter be without seeing it with his own eyes!

However, the Maintainer has just installed a protective network on the super machine, and although it does not seem to monitor its core intelligence, Du Qiu is not taking any chances.

Now, connecting to this super machine through his dreams means a technological treasure trove to him, and he does not want the Maintainer to simply shut it down permanently.

The shutdown before and the recent reboot prevented Du Qiu from connecting for three whole nights, and he definitely does not want to experience that feeling of loss again.

Therefore, Du Qiu plans to be proactive.

Now that he is aware of the existence of the protective network, perhaps he can alter its settings and thus deceive the Maintainer.

As long as he does not whimsically change the super machine’s task list like the last time, the Maintainer surely won’t know that he has taken control of the super machine.

Du Qiu begins to research how to modify the protective network or how to add some kind of program to fool the network’s monitoring of specific situations.

Before this, Du Qiu certainly won’t manifest in the core of intelligence so as not to trigger a warning from the protective network.

After repeatedly studying the protective network’s program, Du Qiu finds he can modify the condition values that trigger a warning to make it a constant, always in a non-triggering state.

The only thing is, Du Qiu does not know if the Maintainer often checks the protective network program— if it checks, it will certainly find that the program has been tampered with.

Fortunately, Du Qiu is only doing this temporarily.

Because once the protective network program stops working, he can manifest in the core of intelligence and create a new program to dynamically and real-time adjust this value.

Thus, from the Maintainer’s perspective, there would be no traces of code alteration in the protective network.

But from Du Qiu’s side, the protective network would never send out warnings again.

Regarding how Du Qiu managed to change the code of the protective network without using the core of intelligence,

It’s because while studying the protective network as a case study, he found that everything here seems to be influenced by his consciousness.

It felt as though he was the God of this place, commanding light to exist…

Uh, cough cough, wrong he can neither bring light nor create humans yet.

However, he found that he could manipulate the execution codes of the protective network with his consciousness, so by studying it, Du Qiu precisely changed the corresponding execution codes.

After doing everything, Du Qiu also repeatedly reviewed and confirmed that the condition always maintained a state that would not trigger.

Only then did Du Qiu leisurely focus his thoughts on the central position of the patch of stars the size of an egg.

A stream of information arrived in an instant as expected.

“Producer 10210028801 accepts the descent, current task list…”

Hmm, Du Qiu was instantly stunned.

This was different from the previous information; it originally said, “Seed 1008600363 accepts the descent…”

Could it be that the Maintainer has made significant changes to the original core of intelligence?

It looks like even the name has changed, although the new name “Producer” seems more apt. The previous “Seed” was difficult to understand, but now “Producer” is much easier to grasp.

Not only the name has changed, but the numeric code behind it has also changed; an extra digit was added, and there was also an extra word, “change”!

It seems that the Maintainer really has comprehensively overhauled the original core of intelligence!

After descending into the core of intelligence, Du Qiu finds that he can call on its computing power, which is a relief because although it executes many production task programs in parallel, there is still plenty of computational capacity to spare.

Du Qiu immediately invokes some of this computing power and quickly scans all programs to inspect the most recently modified areas.

He needs to confirm that the Maintainer has only changed the name and set up a first-level protective network or if there was any other trap program put in place.

After a thorough check – perhaps the aliens are quite confident – Du Qiu didn’t find anything extra.

Apart from some of the foundational modules at the bottom layer, where everything that was previously marked as “Seed” has now been changed to “Producer” and the corresponding numeric codes, there seems to be no other alterations to the main program bodies.

The super machine possesses a vast number of programs, and it’s difficult for Du Qiu to check them all at once. He can only prioritize the most recently modified areas and what he considers the core parts of the programs.

Du Qiu feels it’s important first to confirm that there are no traps, then he can promptly adjust the triggering conditions of the protective network to avoid a sudden check by the Maintainer.

After finishing this task, he can take his time to conduct a thorough inspection.

So Du Qiu hurriedly completes a small program and commands the core of intelligence to execute it.

This small program is responsible for dynamically and real-time adjusting the relevant condition values of the protective network to ensure that warnings are not triggered.

Since this instruction is issued by the core of intelligence, it won’t consider it as a virus and won’t remove it.

With this, Du Qiu has regained control of the super machine!

Now that he has control over the super machine, Du Qiu goes straight to the sensory system.

After fully understanding the detailed functions of the sensory system, Du Qiu is deeply shocked by its power.

The entire sensory system of the super machine integrates super magnetic induction imaging, nanoscale imaging, ultrasonic induction, infrasound detection, infrared sensing, ultraviolet sensing, visible light detection, thermal imaging, dynamic feature detection…

It’s hard to imagine how such a wide variety of sensors could be combined into one system. No wonder he can see various images through that patch of stars.

There are some locations, Du Qiu believes, where it’s simply impossible to place cameras at all.

Many of these sensors’ names are baffling to Du Qiu, while some he can only interpret by their name.

Du Qiu doesn’t dwell on them, but first chooses one he understands, like visible light detection, which is like the super machine’s visual system.

Du Qiu is eager to know whether there are alien maintainers outside the super machine, which is why, after solving his concerns about the protective network, he sought out the sensory system immediately upon his descent.

If you ask any human being from Blue Star if they have the opportunity to see aliens, wouldn’t they really want to know what aliens look like?

Du Qiu thoroughly studies the visible light sensing subsystem and eventually discovers that this subsystem is even stronger than the visual system he had conceived.

Through this subsystem, the super machine can “see” any object within 20 kilometers clearly!

This “seeing” is exquisite with every detail revealed, and the viewing angle can be adjusted to be as large or small as needed.

This is essentially an ultra-high precision super telescope.

Du Qiu knows that with this great tool, he should be able to see the aliens!