A giant tentacle, almost two meters in diameter had grown through the rock formations into the cave. It lay in a deep gully and its black skin was covered with dry, cracked lines. The giant tentacle looked like a strange train, but Hao Ren immediately recognized it; it was an unmissable part of the First Born.
“Sure enough… the worldview of the virtual world is based on reality. The real Zorm lies on the remnants of the goddess’ creation.” Hao Ren jumped into the ditch and carefully touched the seemingly dead tentacle. “It’s dead, but I don’t know if there will be any other living organisms deep in the ground.”
Vivian looked around, feeling uneasy. “This is the refuge Zorm’s people, and the tentacle of the First Born invaded this place…”
“But it seems that the people of Zorm had survived—at least in the virtual world,” Hao Ren said while brushing his hands. He got to his feet and jumped back up. He carefully observed the cave that was connected to the man-made super-alloy tunnels. It appeared like a natural cave but reinforced with alloy grid and beams on the roof, and composite materials in the surrounding rock formations. Even when the planet was gradually disintegrating, the reinforcement had allowed the cave to hold up until this day.
They had seen more than one such cave during their journey down the tunnel. Some were natural and some were man-made. Some of the caves had been transformed into what looked like living quarters, while others storage of cargo and equipment. Just like this cave where empty platforms and metal shelves suggested it was once a storage, the cargo had gone, probably had rotten away.
It was not known how long the people of Zorm took to build this refuge. From the look of it, the virtual world was not on their plan initially. The large number of underground settlements suggested that people were living here. Something must have happened afterwards that they decided to escape deeper into the safety of the virtual world.
“Probably the invasion of the First Born had forced them to give up their worldly body completely.” Hao Ren said. He was basing his conclusion on the facts in hand.
Lily did not say a word; she just came up to the tentacle and examined it curiously. It appeared as if the tentacle invaded the cavern through a purposely-built passage. A metal conduit that looked like a sewer opening was on the wall, through which the tentacle got in and lay in a gully in the cavern. She scratched her chin. “I’ve got the feeling that someone deliberately let the tentacle in here.”
“Why would they want to do that?” Hao Ren asked, and then he saw the instruments in the surroundings. “They wanted to study it?”
They looked at each other; no one seemed to know the answer. Suddenly, the quake came again from deep within the interior of the planet. The shaking and loud noises jolted and woke them up to the critical situation of the planet. The First Born would have to wait; they needed to keep going with the guidance of the navigation map the MDT had provided them.
They saw more tentacles in the other tunnels, halls, and caverns. The tentacles became increasingly weirder; they did not know what to make of them.
Hao Ren’s eyes were on stalks as he again came to a huge man-made cavern. “Oh man! This is…”
The underground bunker was well structured and so vast that it was equivalent to several football fields in size. The dome on the ceiling was one hundred metres above the ground. Luminescent minerals inlaid on the ceiling was providing a faint illumination, they could barely see the situation here. Hao Ren found a number of neatly arranged, dark metal cylinders that looked like building blocks in the centre of the cave. There were metal lines and service hatches on the cylinders while cables and pipes ran around them. These cables and pipes were so strangely thick and solid that they looked like a cobweb in the air. It reminded Hao Ren of the circuitry in some computer lab.
They thought they had found the ‘server’.
But, the ‘server’ was entangled in, or rather, living in symbiosis with a mesh of tentacles.
The dark tentacles hung from the ceiling to a height of more than ten metres from the ground. They were like standardised products from the factory—neat and almost identical, and each of them connected to a cable. The standard, unified connection was by no means accidental. Hao Ren tossed a flashlight into the air and saw how the connections looked like. There was a metal coupling on each connection; one end connected to the cable, the other end was embedded in the tentacle.
“It doesn’t look like an invasion…” Lily murmured as she looked up.
She saw neat rows of metal hoop on the ceiling with a tentacle hanging down in each metal hoop. It was obvious even to the husky’s level of intelligence that this was man-made.
Y’lisabet ran to a metal cylinder on the other side. Earthquake seemed to have damaged the cylinder as its casing had cracked. The little demon peeped curiously into the cylinder through the crack. “Something is inside!” she screamed.
They darted over and found that the metal cylinder was not a server like the one they had imagined; there was no hard disk nor CPU inside but only a broken, large glass container. It seemed the container used to contain liquid but had now dried up. A dead tentacle of the First Born was hanging out from inside.
Lily came before a metal cylinder that seemed to be still in good condition, and carefully cut a hole in the shell with her claw. Like the damaged cylinder, this one also contained a glass container that was still intact. It was filled with a pale red fluid with a black tentacle immersed in it. No one knew if the tentacle was still alive.
Hao Ren could not believe what he saw. “The machine has integrated with the First Born,” he muttered.
“What is this place?” Vivian frowned. “A bio-research lab of the First Born?”
“This facility could never held the First Born,” Hao Ren said as he looked curiously at the ancient equipment. He could not figure out how these things worked but he could roughly know their level of technology. “The First Born allowed it. It was a collaboration.”
Then he pointed to those tentacles hanging from the ceiling. “Look at those tentacles. Have you ever seen this kind of structure on the other ‘natural’ First Born? They obviously had adapted themselves to the machine. And, also look at the equipment around here; they were tailored made to suit the First Born. They were not working against but with each other—seamlessly. I know it sounds ridiculous but I’m afraid this is the only logical explanation.”
Lily came out from behind a metal cylinder, her face serious. “And, this facility is still running—at least part of it is still running.”
Hao Ren arched his eyebrow. “How do you know?” he asked.
Lily turned around and showed her smoky, dark tail. “There is electricity!”
Everyone: “…”
Vivian closed her eyes, trying to feel the signs of life in the surroundings. “Not only the facility is running, but the tentacles are showing a faint sign of life—they are still alive.”
A question popped in Hao Ren’s head. “Is this what we’re supposed to look for?”
Suddenly, there was another quake. Dust fell from the ceiling. The MDT had called in. “Hey, buddy! Half an hour to sunrise! What is the situation down there now?”
“I… I have found something here,” said Hao Ren hesitatingly. He then planted a series of sensors on the nearby cables and metal cylinders. He needed to find out what these cables and cylinders were for; the smart sensors might help. “I’m sending you data. It is from the cable system in the refuge. Analyse it.”
A moment later, the MDT came back with a happy voice. “Oh oh, looks like a server’s data stream. Go to a key node and trace along a main cable, you should be able to find the memory storage—”
“But there is a problem,” Hao Ren cut in. “The storage is not a bunch of hard drives but the First Born. Strictly speaking, the server itself is the First Born. The people of Zorm are in the dreams of the First Born.”