In the bright sunlight, a planet was rapidly ushering in its demise.
The sunny side of Zorm was erupting like fireworks; rock layers were melting, and there was cracking as well as vaporization occuring. The planet was being torn apart by gravity, and pulled into space towards the sun. The planet gave away its mass as it rotated, marching towards the end in the most spectacular way. In the dark side of Zorm, a bridge of life was trying to save the civilization that once lived on this planet six hours before the planet was about to end its existence.
The strata around the equator blossomed like a flower bud when countless giant tentacles existing between the realm of plants and animals broke through the surface and pushed the planet’s crust up and outwards so high that the crust became taller than the highest mountain on this planet. In the centre of the ‘bud’ were a mass of flesh, blood, plants and machine, the red glow that it emitted was now the most striking light on the dark side of Zorm.
This entire structure was like a giant flower bloomed in a world that was fall into the hot sun.
The Petrachelys was like a silver bird, which dexterously hovering at the heart of the ‘flower of life’. It had many cables and pipes connecting to heart of the planet, as if a hummingbird sucking up honey, retrieving the souls of 1.6 billion people of Zorm,
A drone flying over the planet had taken a photo of this spectacular, rare scene and sent it back to the inspector communication platform.
It was normal for inspectors to post their images from their missions on the platform. Hao Ren was now accustomed to this habit. It was not show off his achievements—there was no need to show off in front of his peers, he posted the images just to keep tract of his journey, record every civilisation and scenery. Because these sceneries could have disappeared very soon.
He did the same for Zorm.
“The transfer is in progress. The bandwidth is just enough,” the MDT said. It was keeping an eye on the transfer of the souls. “Thanks to the Empire Technology; we already knew how to transcode the soul since thousands of years ago, otherwise it would be a hassle to upload and download the souls.”
What would happen had Hao Ren not laid the drone clusters earlier? He almost broke out in cold sweat when he thought about that.
“Just admit it that you just want to show off,” Lily gave Hao Ren a sideways glance and then wagged her tail. “But then… it shows your far-sightedness. Just that nobody could see that in you.”
Hearing that, Vivian smiled wryly. “By the same token, we also have never thought that you could graduate from Peking University four times.”
As things went smoothly, the atmosphere on the flight deck eased up as everyone began cracking jokes. But, Hao Ren’s eyes had never left the console. He was holding his breath during this critical moment.
The time passed so slowly that it was almost unbearable. Hao Ren did not know how long he had been staring at the console. He only knew that he had only taken a short break when Vivian brought him a cup of tea. But he returned to the captain’s seat very quickly. 1.6 billion human-souls plus the soul of a First Born, the amount of data was staggering. Even though the drone clusters had optimised the transfer method, it would not be able to complete the transfer in a very short time. Six-hour window gradually closed but the transfer still stood at ninety percent. The atmosphere on the flight deck became tense again. Lily fixed her eyes on the monitor, a fireball refracted in her eyes.
“The sunrise!”
Throughout the transfer process, the Petrachelys was hovering in synchronous orbit above the data release port. As the planet rotated, it had now come back to the position where the spot would greet the sun again. A blindingly bright and hot wall of fire began to appear in the horizon.
The MDT sounded in desperation. “Final five percent!”
The magnificent sunshine had appeared on the horizon. A ring of fire was closing. But that was not real flame but a light curtain produced when the steam spurted up into the sky and refracted the sunlight. The temperature of this wall of steam was even more terrible than fire as it moved toward the data release port and ablated everything on its path!
And, accompanying the wall of fire was the even deadlier gravity of the star. Watching on the screen, the distant horizon was like a carpet rolling up as uncountable amount of debris rose and floated towards the sun. The shocks had even begun to damage the structure of the data release port. Earth was collapsing around the ‘flowers of life,’ and huge pit was forming one after another. The tentacles inside the data release port were rapidly turning greyish and died as the sun finally burned through all the protective layers and killed the ancient creature en masse.
Its central nervous system was still working tenaciously. The progress bar on the screen was still moving albeit slowly. But, undoubtedly it was still progressing!
“Three percent to go!”
Daylight continued to close in, and the shell of the Petrachelys began to dye with a golden red light. The fragile tissue inside the data release port was now exposed to the sunlight completely. Without the cover of the earth, everything began to go up in flame.
“One percent to go!”
The First Born’s tentacles were burning. But the burning process was weird and shocking due to the thin oxygen. Hundreds of kilometres of tentacles glowed under the sun, and then turned into coke in an instant. The process happened so fast that it was threatening the ‘heart in the core of the data release port. The ‘heart’ was alive; all residual energy around the planet was channelled into it as it was sending the last bit of data to the Petrachelys.
But, at this critical moment, the MDT suddenly screamed. “It’s stuck!”
Hao Ren could not really get what it meant. “What you meant ‘stuck’?
A group of garbled data flashing across the holographic display. The MDT locked in to one of the entries. “It’s Nolan! Her data is incompatible with the communication links!” the MDT cried out.
By now, sunlight had shone into the base of the ‘heart’. The heart quickly withered and died under the high temperature. Tendons rose on the surface of the unknown tissues and organs before they burst into a mixture of lifeblood, electrolytes, industrial oils, and flesh fragments. Vivian became even more anxious then Hao Ren did. “What happens?” she asked.
“The drone’s data link was configured to into soul transfer mode, we have only registered the soul code of the people of Zorm and the First Born,” the MDT explained quickly. “But Nolan is an AI!”
Hao Ren became to come to his senses.
Though Nolan lived in the virtual world, she was not a member of the world at all, or more accurately, she was not a living creature.
Her soul belonged to machine that kept the First Born alive.
The done clusters’ data link could only transmit the soul of carbon-based creatures. The system had forgotten to leave Nolan an escape route!
This was like forcing data to be sent across an incompatible network. When the data arrived at the destination, it became a bunch of garbled characters.
And, even if the forced transmission was successful and the data of Nolan was sent to the CARS, what was left was only a memory: a compressed file containing all the memory of Nolan. But, without soul, it was like a program without an execution file, the program would not run. Others might be able to read the life story of Nolan, but no matter how you read them, the girl named Nolan would never give a response again.
Hao Ren looked at the collapsing data release port; he was rooted to the spot. But his mind was still working as he squeezed out his last bit of wisdom and asked the MDT aloud, “Is transmission protocol compatibility the only problem? No problem in saving the data, right?”
“Correct…” the MDT was a little baffled. What do you want to do?”
Hao Ren did not reply but quickly entered the last instruction on the console.
At this moment, he began to appreciate his effort in the past; now all the knowledge had come in handy, as he needed them to use the high-tech instrument.
When the last instruction was being carried out, sunlight finally shone on the data release port, completely engulfing the last living tissue of the First Born in flame. A few seconds later, the data release port exploded.
All the parameters on the console returned to zero. Everything was over.