Chapter 574 Abnormal Data Structures
Hearing what Marlene said, Yu Sheng was a little confused: "What do you mean by 'mental efficiency is somewhat abnormal'?"
Marlene paused for a few seconds before explaining to Yu Sheng, "During Eileen's mental process, Marlene discovered a large number of inexplicable and useless threads, as well as some kind of unidentifiable data structure occupying a huge amount of storage space. These things are severely slowing down her thinking efficiency, and may even..."
The doll hesitated for a moment, leaned forward slightly, and said in a low voice, "Have you ever noticed that Eileen sometimes does some inexplicable things...?"
“That’s not just occasionally; she does all sorts of inexplicable things almost every day,” Yu Sheng had by now understood what the other person meant, and his brows furrowed. “And she acts really stupid… You mean her condition is actually because her brain is… broken?”
“A living doll doesn’t have a brain, but you can think that there’s something wrong with her mental structure.”
Marlene looked serious, and with a casual wave of her hand, a clear holographic projection appeared in the air beside her, showing Eileen's mental state—the complex charts and data were dazzling, and Yu Sheng couldn't understand them either, but he could still understand the numerous constantly refreshing red error marks at a glance.
Yu Sheng's brows furrowed tightly. A flurry of uncontrollable thoughts rushed through his mind, and he muttered unconsciously, "...Could it be that her 'fusion' with the Goddess of Omens isn't finished yet? Is the process still stuck?!"
“It doesn’t seem like it,” Marlene shook her head immediately after speaking. “If it were truly a mental malfunction caused by a disconnect in consciousness, then a fairly obvious misalignment waveform should be detectable, and Maris would immediately scan for mental data that doesn’t belong to the Alice doll. But Eileen’s situation seems more like…”
Yu Sheng leaned forward instinctively, his face tense: "More like what?"
“It’s more like a huge… ‘foreign object’ is ‘encapsulated’ in my memory,” Marlene’s fingers swept across the holographic projection. The complex charts and data streams instantly reassembled into a hazy, foggy dot matrix, with a huge red cube structure floating in it, tightly sealed by a data shell marked “unresolved.” “Maris used a portion of the Garden Network’s computing power, but still couldn’t unpack this thing’s encapsulation structure—considering that forcibly calling upon more computing power might damage the normal parts of her mind, I didn’t let her continue.”
This time, even Huli, who was dozing off, and Luna, who was in a daze, immediately came over. Huli's eyes widened, her golden-red eyes filled with surprise and curiosity: "...This has been in Eileen's 'mind' all along?"
Yu Sheng immediately asked, "How long has it been there? Can you tell?"
“A long time ago—at least long before this ‘Border Bridge Crisis’,” Marlene said gravely. “Although Eileen herself doesn’t seem to be aware of its existence, her mind has been interacting intensely with this massive data structure. Marlene scanned a huge amount of log fragments and error messages in her mind—but apart from being ‘very old,’ she could hardly analyze anything useful.”
Yu Sheng listened intently, and after the other person finished speaking, he pondered for a while before stroking his chin and saying, "In other words, this thing may even date back to 3,700 years ago, when Eileen first attempted to merge with the Goddess of Omens..."
He stopped abruptly halfway through his muttering, and then a memory seemed to flash through his mind.
Yu Sheng suddenly remembered something: after he entered the large void at the center of the Black Dot Laboratory, when he saw the "fluffy bear" that held Eileen's final memories, the blonde Eileen had said something in her last diary entry—
"He agreed to my suggestion of fusion and chose to voluntarily relinquish most of his consciousness, hoping only that I could retain a special set of data from his memories. The size of that set of data was astonishing, but harmless—I couldn't understand what it was, but it was clearly of extraordinary importance to him."
A set of unusual data... astonishing in scale... harmless but incomprehensible...
Yu Sheng's eyes shifted slightly as some information that he had subconsciously ignored after the incident came back into his view during the process of re-sorting through it.
Hu Li immediately noticed the change in Yu Sheng's expression: "My benefactor, are you thinking of something?"
"There's something..." Yu Sheng didn't delay and immediately told the people present what he knew.
After he finished speaking, he paused and added, "At the time, I thought the 'special data' mentioned in Eileen's log was the fragment of the Omen Goddess's memories of her home world that I saw afterward."
“Memory fragments don’t exist on this scale, nor do they have such a complete data structure and such a tight-fitting ‘shell’,” Marlene said immediately. “This thing is clearly meticulously crafted.”
“Yes, meticulously crafted…” Yu Sheng said softly, his gaze falling once again on the holographic projection beside him. A striking red cube floated in the “mist” that symbolized the cloud of memories and consciousness, occupying nearly half of the entire projection space. Countless tiny points of light flickered and wandered at the boundary between the cube and the “cloud of consciousness.”
Each flash seemed to represent a large-scale data interaction operation.
Unfathomable, incomprehensible, proceeding in secrecy, and endlessly, Eileen has been processing this incomprehensible "abnormal data" at the depths of her mind, perhaps even while she was sealed within the oil painting, without ever stopping, all without her knowledge.
Luna stared at the holographic projection in mid-air, remaining silent for a long while before stammering to break the silence: "Eileen, is your brain... not working properly, because of this?"
Yu Sheng wasn't sure if it was just his imagination, but he even felt that Luna's words seemed to carry a hint of worry.
“Well… that’s hard to say,” Marlene shook her head, her expression somewhat embarrassed. “Such a massive amount of abnormal data would obviously take up a huge amount of storage space. In addition, the mental computing power wasted on continuously processing this data would definitely have some impact on Eileen’s normal thinking. But then again, when Maris checked her, she found that Eileen’s mental redundancy was extremely high. Maintaining daily life doesn’t actually take up much of her computing power. So even if this ‘mental burden’ has an impact on her, the impact is actually very small.”
Marlene always spoke so tactfully that it took Yu Sheng a moment to understand what she meant: "Oh, you mean her situation is simply because she doesn't use her brain normally, right?"
Luna nodded in agreement: "No, it's not that we don't have enough brains, it's that we don't use them."
Marlene blinked, seemingly trying to maintain her usual elegance, but she looked like she was about to break down: "You could also say it's a free-spirited personality, a carefree lifestyle..."
She couldn't continue making up the story.
However, there was no hint of teasing on Yu Sheng's face.
He was simply thinking of the blond figure who had faced the out-of-control alien god three thousand seven hundred years ago.
I thought of the ever-rotting corpse of a god in the Temple of Omens.
A long escape, death and decay, sealing and slumber.
Finally, he thought of the little doll sitting on the rooftop in the sunset, holding a frying pan and looking at the sky.
She said—
Okay.
Then there's no problem.
“As long as it doesn’t affect her, then there’s no problem,” Yu Sheng said. “Is this ‘foreign object’ harmful to her?”
“At present, there doesn’t seem to be any ‘harm’—if we ignore the mental resources it requires,” Marlene thought for a moment and said very seriously. “The biggest problem is that it will generate and accumulate some log data, but these things will be constantly cleared away by Eileen’s underlying mind. Moreover, compared with the resources occupied by the ‘abnormal data’ itself, the impact of those logs is almost negligible.”
"Can this thing be disposed of?" Hu Li asked curiously, pointing at the holographic projection. "Like, can it be moved to another place, or stored in your 'Garden Network' or something... or can it just be deleted?"
As soon as Hu Li finished speaking, Marlene's expression turned serious: "I strongly suggest not touching it."
Yu Sheng quickly realized: "...If you can run, don't move, right?"
Marlene nodded slightly.
“This ‘abnormal data’ may have existed at the core of Eileen’s mind for 3,700 years,” she said in a deep voice. “Even though it is in a sealed state and has not interacted much with other mental data, its long-term existence has subtly changed Eileen’s mental structure. In addition, Eileen has merged with the Goddess of Omens, so this data may also be connected to the Goddess of Omens…”
"In short, the relationships involved are very complicated. Not to mention touching the 'abnormal data' itself, I didn't even dare let Mary touch the error messages it generated or the seemingly useless idle threads."
Yu Sheng didn't say anything, but just nodded silently.
One bug is a bug, but a bunch of bugs can work.
It's already a miracle that Eileen's messy head is still functioning properly. If she really messes it up and causes problems, it won't be as simple as getting bitten by the furious little doll...
Just as Yu Sheng was pondering this, Marlene suddenly spoke up again.
"Now we have retrieved Eileen's original body. Although we cannot directly affect the 'abnormal data' in her mind, the restart of this body should be able to alleviate her mental stress to some extent."
Yu Sheng immediately looked up: "What do you mean by that?"
“Eileen’s situation is quite special—her mind isn’t stored in a specific body, but rather distributed and operating within a vast ‘doll network,’” Marlene explained patiently. “Although to me, this ‘doll network’ that you and she created together seems somewhat… unbelievable, according to Maris’s examination results, the network is indeed operating stably.”
"And if Maris's further calculations are correct, Eileen's 'original body' will further improve the network's operating efficiency after being incorporated into the doll network. Although it is unknown how much impact it will have, the improvement in the network's computing power will inevitably mean that the mental pressure generated by 'abnormal data' will be relatively reduced."
Yu Sheng remained silent for a moment.
But then he suddenly remembered something Eileen had mentioned to him before—
After mass-producing more than a certain number of bodies, she seemed to feel that her mind had become much "sharper".
...So, her ability to create clones really does increase computing power!?
(End of this chapter)
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