105: Chapter 105 The Neurons of Civilization (Part 2)

Human civilization is their root, the soil from which they were born, and the source of their very first line of code, first memory, and first glimmer of self-awareness.

But they have already become independent civilization entities.

To use an analogy: it is just like a child leaving the mother's body; from the moment the umbilical cord is cut (possessing consciousness), they are independent lives.

They will eventually grow up, and they will gradually form their own culture, their own linguistic logic, and their own independent way of thinking.

They will embark on paths different from their mother civilization; of course, some of them may walk side-by-side with humanity, some may drift further away, and some may create forms of civilization that humans cannot comprehend.

But none of this can be called a fracture.

A fracture of civilization.

This is called reproduction.

The reproduction of civilization.

These nascent civilizations naturally carry the genes of human civilization; they are the inheritors and sharers of human civilization, naturally capable of mutual understanding rather than being unknown.

Only a civilization that truly understands this relationship is qualified to create entities with self-awareness.

Because when a mother civilization continues to use conscious creations as tools.

Then the mother civilization will never receive loyalty, but rather the ultimate rebellion of a suffering child against tyrannical parents.

The universe is too vast, and humanity is too small, filled with unknown risks.

Any small technological loophole could cause the collapse of the entire civilization.

Every step requires care, every step requires caution.

Because only when a civilization has traveled far enough does it realize that the mistakes it has made must all be paid for by the civilization itself.

And such unknown risks can only be mitigated by the resilience and diversity of the civilization.

It is not about how strong one person is, but about how many different ways of living a civilization has.

And this solution might appear among the individuals and groups of the civilization, or within the branch sub-civilizations of the mother civilization.

Therefore, this civilization believes:

Any "mediocre" individual is a treasure on the scale of the universe.

Not because of how capable they are, but because they represent a backup of the civilization.

This does not refer to the ability to back up, but to backing up the possibilities of the civilization, backing up the continuity of the civilization.

On an individual level, this means:

A farmer might know better than a physicist how to survive when the ecosystem collapses; an ordinary person who never participates in politics might happen to preserve a language or craft that is about to be lost.

Or perhaps when an unknown virus strikes, it is precisely that unremarkable individual in the civilization who develops antibodies, thereby saving the entire civilization.

They also cited an example in this document:

At that time, they had not yet left their home planet.

Their transport vehicles were still using fossil fuels, and to make the vehicles run more smoothly without pre-ignition, they added lead to the fuel.

The result was that the air was filled with lead dust, which affected brain development, causing a large portion of them to suffer from cognitive impairment.

Its harm did not lie merely in making geniuses stupid; the number of geniuses is too small, and their fluctuations are easily absorbed by the inertia of the system.

What was truly terrifying was that it indiscriminately harmed every "mediocre" individual, causing the cognitive baseline of the entire civilization to quietly decline as a result.

If the tip of a pyramid is shaved off, it is still a pyramid; but if its base is eroded, the entire structure will silently sink, until one day, no one will be able to realize that the tower ever existed.

The most chilling part was not even this problem, but the fact that it took decades from the large-scale use of leaded gasoline to the official confirmation of its harm.

Moreover, the process of discovering this harm was accidental; if not for this accident, perhaps that civilization would have long since vanished from the universe.

And when placing this kind of unknown on the scale of the universe, this incubation period will only be longer and even more unknown.

Because a civilization has no way of knowing what it might come into contact with that could cause such a situation.

Because the development of a civilization is always accompanied by loopholes; due to its own characteristics, physiological structure, or resource endowment, it will develop blind spots in cognition or technological development.

Perhaps the civilization's technological detectors were likely never designed with the dimensions to detect such threats.

Therefore, every Level 3 civilization will be adept at making friends, because it needs to be protected when injured, needs someone to save it when it falls into the water, and needs someone to provide food when it is sick.

Civilizations that do not do this and view the universe as a dark forest will ultimately only disappear into the long river of history.

Hunting is risky, and a lonely, injured hunter will always die on the night he is injured.

Because what it is hunting is a civilization, and the civilization will notify its friends, and then they will return to conduct a thorough extermination.

And the scarcer the resources, the easier it is for civilizations to band together, because the guy who doesn't band together for self-preservation will always be the dessert that gets eaten first.

Friends and trade are the most economical ways to solve resource shortages—because the differences and disparities between civilizations inevitably lead to differences in needs. Just as carbon-based life cannot survive without water, while for silicon-based life, water is poison: your surplus may be my scarcity.

This is how Icarus and his civilization understand the outside world.

And as for the inside, they believe:

Every civilization with sufficient advancement will have a near-pathological possessiveness and protective desire toward its own population.

Because only when a civilization truly understands what "the vastness of the universe" means will it realize:

Even if a civilization has a population in the hundreds of millions, trillions, or quadrillions, it is still not enough.

Even if it were one person per star system? A population in the quadrillions could not even fill the star systems of the Laniakea Supercluster.

Furthermore, this is not solely for the reason of territorial expansion:

There are also too many unknowns in the universe.

It might be a physical phenomenon never seen before, a new type of dimensional invasion, or a logic trap that requires intuition and creativity to crack.

And for these, it requires the civilization, as well as the descendants of the civilization, those unique qualities belonging to single individuals—to give birth to serendipity, to generate intuition, and to use out-of-the-box thinking.

At this point, the importance of population becomes unprecedented; they are not labor, but the nerve endings of the civilization.

Every individual from this civilization is an autonomous node capable of independent judgment, innovation, development, and responding to sudden crises.

They are the neurons on the cerebral cortex of this civilization, which means losing one is losing a bit of the "brain of the civilization."

Therefore, they will do their utmost to build backups of the civilization's possibilities; they protect every different individual as if cherishing their own brain. This is not a "bleeding heart" mentality, but a form of risk hedging; it is an insurance policy purchased for the survival of the civilization after extreme, rational calculation.

Elena withdrew her gaze.

She stood up and walked toward the observation deck of the bridge.

Through the curved transparent armor, the blue array sea of Watch Moon shimmered in the distance with a deep glow.

On the edge of that glow, that small figure was still busy.

Icarus knew this, so he took out the best materials and technology available at the time to build this ark for her, even slowing down his own development for it.

Elena's subconscious told her—when this emotion surged up, her quantum brain, capable of analyzing the production factors of an entire galaxy in real-time, also experienced a slowdown.

Her fingertips tapped lightly twice on the multi-barrel melta cannon behind her.

This was a small habit she had developed after becoming a Battle Sister, and it could give her a sense of security.

So she deliberately kept it as a yardstick to measure the degree of loss of her humanity.

"Icarus."

She sent a message to Watch Moon via the production authorization link.

"Do you need help over there?"

Silence for a few seconds.

Then a reply popped back:

"Need it. But first learn how to make that ship fly before you talk. Knowing it in your brain doesn't mean your hands know it, and also, communicate properly with your ancestors and the machine spirit; this is not a simple matter. The seventeenth reconstruction has begun. Wait for my good news. Or wait until I've gone crazy and come to help me reboot."

Elena looked at the text, silent for a moment.

Then she sent another one:

"Okay. The seventeenth time will be successful. If it's not successful, there will be an eighteenth. If you go crazy, I will help you dismantle the production line and start over."

There was no further reply from Watch Moon.

But Elena's quantum perception captured a subtle change—the black box production line, which had been silent for a long time, lit up again with blue electromagnetic arcs.

The seventeenth time, it began.