Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 255 Digital Echoes

Zuo Cheng stood at the edge of the recess. The fiber optic structure beneath the transparent material beneath his feet began to glow, not the white of industrial lighting, but a color he had seen before. It was exactly the same as the warm yellow light spots on the pedestal in the Taklamakan Cave. The light rose from beneath his feet, flowing over his body like water.

He closed his eyes.

The civilization perception interface unfolded automatically in his consciousness. The Sahara node changed from pale blue to deep gold, and concentric ripples appeared around it, spreading outwards. This was a sign of signal transmission. A communication device that had been dormant for at least four billion years was awakening.

The system displays a message: The Origin Communication Protocol has been loaded. Do you wish to attempt to establish a connection with a registered consciousness in the current node?

Zuo Cheng consciously chose yes.

A blurry outline appeared in the consciousness space. It wasn't a complete digital twin like Gu Feng's. Gu Feng's digital body had facial details that could be discerned with the naked eye. This outline was more like a collection of fragments slowly coalescing, its edges constantly expanding and reorganizing, like a wisp of humanoid smoke blown by the wind.

The silhouette spoke. The voice was intermittent, like an old radio tuning, with white light noise between each sentence.

"Zuo Cheng. You've arrived. At least two years earlier than I expected."

Zuo Cheng asked in his mind: Are you Old Chen?

The sound paused for a long time, so long that Zuo Cheng thought the connection had been lost.

"This is more complicated than you think. I am a digital copy of Chen Xinghe created during the digitization of his consciousness. But I wasn't uploaded completely. Forty-three percent. His heart stopped twice during the surgery, and each time it stopped, a portion of neural data was lost. So I am not the complete Chen Xinghe. I only have forty-three percent of his memories and personality."

Forty-three percent.

Not 100%. Not 90%. It's 43%. A soul that's less than half complete.

Zuo Cheng asked: What about the remaining 57 percent?

"Remain in those last nerve impulses he couldn't pass on to me. Those might be the most important things. His last words to you."

Zuo Cheng was silent for a moment. Forty-three percent of Chen Xinghe. Not complete, not clear enough, but real enough. A person used the last eighteen months of his life to create something with forty percent of his most essential qualities that could wait for people, speak, and guide the way.

A few seconds of silence filled the consciousness space. Zuo Cheng thought of a question: Professor Gu Feng's digital consciousness is 97% complete, while yours is only 43%. What is the difference between them?

Chen Xinghe's answer was unexpected.

"The difference isn't technology. It's about timing. I was four years ahead of him. Back then, the NX-30's neural signal encoding algorithm wasn't perfect, and the electrode density was only thirty-two channels. Professor Gu Feng used a version that had undergone fourteen iterations. But my existence proves one thing: the digitization of consciousness doesn't have to wait for technological perfection. Even if it's only forty-three percent, I'm still forty-three percent more than if I didn't exist. That forty-three percent allows me to wait for you here. It allows me to tell you how to proceed."

Yu Ying monitored Zuo Cheng's brain activity from outside the groove using a portable brain-computer interface device. She saw a pattern in Zuo Cheng's brainwaves she had never seen before: a highly structured waveform that contained characteristics of both alpha and gamma waves, but whose rhythm and amplitude did not belong to any known EEG classification. Even more shocking to her was that this waveform was not generated by Zuo Cheng's brain itself. Another signal was superimposed on the waveform, like two people talking simultaneously on the same telephone line at different frequencies. She realized that what she was seeing was not the brainwaves of one person, but those of two people—one inside the groove, and one deep within the fiber optic network.

She wrote in her notebook: This is not communication. It's something much older. Like how life perceives each other before the invention of a mother tongue.

Zuo Cheng continued his conversation with the half-complete old man in the space of consciousness.

"You know I've been reborn."

Digital Chen Xinghe did not deny it. "Because within the consciousness interface of this relic, I can see your memory structure. There's a very obvious branch that doesn't belong to this world. Only those who start over will have that kind of memory structure."

Zuo Cheng remained silent. He had never told anyone about his rebirth. But an old man who had passed away four years ago, through an incomplete digital consciousness, saw his deepest secret in his mind.

"Don't be afraid. The reason the tech tree system chose you isn't because you're the smartest, but because you got back up after failing. In its system, someone who has experienced failure once is more motivated than any genius to push the tech tree to its limit."

During the connection process, Yu Ying observed a new change outside the groove. The color of the optical fiber at the bottom of the groove changed from warm yellow to light green. She recorded the change with a scanner and noted: "The communication depth has increased; the color change may correspond to a shift in the protocol layer."

About ten minutes later, the energy of the digital Chen Xinghe began to wane.

"My energy won't last much longer. I can still answer one question for you. Ask the most important one."

Zuo Cheng asked: Where is the remaining 57 percent?

Digital Chen Xinghe remained silent. "Earth. Crossing point. You. That fifty-seven percent of your information died along with your body. But the essence of that information is about the coordinates of the real Earth. When you crossed over, your consciousness briefly came into contact with Earth's information flow. That information was buried deep within your subconscious. You don't need to find my fifty-seven percent. You only need to find the memory buried deep within your own mind."

The connection was lost. Zuo Cheng opened his eyes and found himself kneeling in the center of the recess, his face wet. Yu Ying supported his shoulders and called his name.

He said one sentence, his voice hoarse.

"He knew I was reborn. He knew it even before I did."

The last words Chen Xinghe uttered before he vanished still echoed in his mind.

"The Founding Civilization is not extinct. They are still here. Somewhere in the universe, they are waiting for the first civilizations to pass the test. You may be the first. Don't keep them waiting too long."

Yu Ying helped him up and handed him a bottle of water. Zhao Wenbo and Yang Hong stood at a distance watching, not coming over. They knew it would take Zuo Cheng a few minutes to sort through all the words the half-complete old man had left in his mind. Zuo Cheng had written down every word Chen Xinghe had said in the system panel's memo. Not because he was afraid of forgetting, but because he was afraid he wouldn't be sure if that conversation had actually happened.

That conversation was real.