Chapter 33 The Price of Freedom
The apocalypse will break out in the summer of 2035, but before that, the information about the contamination has already been spreading quietly in human society.
It started secretly and on a small scale, within certain national institutions and on some private websites.
Later, people went missing in various places, their fates unknown.
Among these people are reclusive tycoons, top hackers and advertising executives, senior engineers working for certain internet giants, and even founders.
As the number of missing persons increased, the spread of information about the pollution also became rapid.
A popular streamer with millions of followers was live streaming when the video suddenly froze and then played a video for more than ten seconds with nonsensical content and a sound effect that sounded like it was scraping someone's eardrums.
A social media platform with hundreds of millions of users has started pushing ads to its users:
[Psychological Test: What did you see first in this picture?]
Can you hear this sound? Many people can't.
This spot-the-difference game is so hard! I stayed up all night and still couldn't beat it, while my best friend has been playing it for two days straight!
A well-known singer-songwriter released a new song with a bizarre melody that broke all the rules of arrangement.
Because it was so strange, so incomprehensible yet irresistible, it quickly climbed to the top of the trending charts on major music platforms:
The latest "crazy song" sounds like eating small mushrooms when you listen to it.
It might be taken down soon, download it quickly!
An artificial intelligence company's flagship language model, "Shenqi," has had its understanding severely distorted, perhaps due to something strange being mixed into its training data.
When it interacts with many users, it outputs indoctrination-related content, and even directly outputs images and text containing polluting information!
Some pirate websites contain folders and torrents of cracked games, e-books, movies, etc., and the contents are even more explicit, including video clips of mutation processes and audio recordings of real insect screams!
This spiritual plague, which spreads through the internet, first appeared in March 2035, and then erupted in April with great force!
Even though much information is hidden, it takes time for people to go from passively encountering it to actively exploring and trying to understand it, and then being contaminated. But strange people are starting to appear in various places!
Before the apocalypse, the population density in cities was too high. If a corrupted insect appeared and was not detected and eliminated in time, it could contaminate an entire street and alarm half the city!
As a result, sensational news such as "A zombie outbreak is suspected in a certain city!" and "Unidentified monsters attack citizens!" quickly spread online!
This was truly a catastrophe, a bizarre and uncontrollable catastrophe!
However, this catastrophe did not directly escalate into an apocalyptic crisis.
The government was prepared.
Because they had been prepared, the government became aware of the spread of polluting information online once it reached a certain scale.
Upon noticing the situation, an immediate response was taken, and an emergency relief team was quickly established.
Technicians quickly blocked and traced the source of online pollution information and tracked down the users who viewed it.
This process is quite difficult because the contaminated information contaminates everyone, including these technicians.
For the military and police on the ground, taking away and isolating people who have been exposed to contaminated information is the simplest task, but this process may also involve exposure to contaminated information.
Their mission to exterminate the mutated Fallen Insects was 100% contaminated, and tracking down the group spreading the contaminated information was extremely dangerous!
Everyone has to figure things out by trial and error, and some people are born with resistance to pollution.
Because it was discovered that some people were born with resistance, the disaster relief department began to replace personnel and quickly summarized a set of testing standards based on the experience of those who were killed, and replenished manpower according to these standards.
It was the highest standard of response, the full force of the state apparatus, and it also had covert support.
After entering June, this great spiritual "plague" was temporarily contained.
Of course, the pollution situation barely stabilized in June, but the pandemic broke out in July, and perhaps a devastating fate was inevitable.
However, even if destruction is destiny, destiny has its executors!
The perpetrators of the massive pollution outbreak in the spring of 1935 were the missing tycoons, hackers, and engineers.
The base's high command speculated that the team formed by these mutated individuals was the prototype and core of the current Fallen Insect Information Team.
They were among the first people on Earth to be contaminated.
The reason it is described as "on Blue Star" is because, in addition to being the "earliest," it also has a "primordial" origin.
The original polluters were the six astronauts of the "Jiutian" lunar probe.
Tan Fu really wanted to crawl out of the internet cable. If Qiu Yunmeng was really on the other end, she would love to see what Qiu Yunmeng looked like now.
Qiu Yunmeng was formerly a systems engineer for the "Jiutian" spacecraft and the first woman to set foot on the dark side of the moon!
The archives contain everything; Tan Fu has seen her photos and videos.
A little girl wearing open-crotch pants and two pigtails is holding an apple as big as her face and is eating it with great enthusiasm.
He was working so hard, his little brows furrowed, as if he saw this apple as a life challenge he was determined to overcome!
Her earnestness was so comical that it made her grandmother and mother next to her burst into laughter.
There were also elementary school students wearing red scarves and with two braids, giving proud speeches on the flag-raising platform.
The little girl stood in the morning light, her white teeth seemingly glowing.
When she went to participate in the math Olympiad in middle school, she carried her schoolbag and walked to the examination hall with her back straight, her ponytail swaying slightly in the shadows of the trees.
And when she graduated from university, she wore her bachelor's gown, held her gold-embossed double degree certificates for "Automation" and "Computer Science and Technology," and smiled slightly at the camera.
Then the woman cut her hair short and wore a heavy spacesuit.
The blue and white launch vehicle on the launch tower reaches the sky and touches the ground, while human figures appear as tiny as dust.
A row of six astronauts stood at attention and saluted the national flag before receiving the order to ascend the tower and enter the cabin.
Just before Qiu Yunmeng climbed the tower, a fleeting moment of her turning back was captured by the media's cameras.
Those dark eyes held so much light! A single glance from them seemed to ignite a surge of power within one's very being!
What did the heroine look like when she landed again?
She was one of the original corruptors, who transformed into the Ash Priestess.
She grew wings and could soar through the heavens without the aid of a steel behemoth.
But she was no longer excited about the journey to the stars and the sea, nor would she salute that splash of red again.
She corrupted her former college classmates, assembled a team to spread the pollution, and unleashed a disaster on earth!
In the instant after the mutation, your dream was gone.
Your principles are gone, your family is gone, the country you swore to be loyal to, the people you loved dearly, have all become things you laugh at.
You still remember your grandmother and your mother, but that apple means nothing to you anymore. The certificates on the wall and the trophies in the cabinet are probably no different from junk now.
The pain you've endured, your efforts, and what you've accomplished are all meaningless now.
All those footprints you left on the ground, the moments in your life, and the life within those moments, are gone.
You probably don't even think about these questions, do you? I think you corrupted insects have lost the ability to contemplate life because you no longer have a life.
I've always been curious, what benefit do you get from spreading pollution? Or is it an instinct that's been ingrained in every cell of your body since the moment of the mutation?
Power comes from pollution, and this instinct must also come from pollution. You fallen insects have said that pollution is a gift from the gods.
That is, the polluting instinct rooted in every cell of your body comes from the divine.
Tan Fu propped his head up and coldly curled his lip:
Following this line of thought, it's completely wrong for you to say "treat God as I treat myself, and I as He treats God" when it comes to gods.
You are clearly Him!
At the moment of complete transformation, your ego was swallowed up by Him, and what remains is a part of Him!
Is it one of His tentacles? A neuron?
Tan Fu couldn't imagine what that deity looked like or what form it took, but one thing she was certain of:
Mutation can set people free? Pshaw!
Mutation is not freedom, it's suicide!
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