Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Mother

It was understandable that Diao Chan couldn’t kill his mother, but he could always kill Zhao Meiyou. Maybe not in the real world, but in his lost state he wouldn’t even recognize who Zhao Meiyou was.

It wouldn’t be a real death anyway. Zhao Meiyou lay down like Juliet in her death scene, his mental abacus clicking furiously. So long as the brain stayed intact.

I really am a clever one, Zhao Meiyou thought, watching Diao Chan holding the knife. One slash and a finishing stab should do it; later he’d just have to make his “death” convincing.

Instead, Qian Duoduo lunged in, tore the knife from Diao Chan’s hand, took off Zhao Meiyou’s head in a single stroke, scooped up the head, and bolted.

Qian Duoduo moved so fast Zhao Meiyou hadn’t even processed it when the man’s voice sounded from somewhere above his crown: “Zhao Meiyou, do you think Diao Chan’s mother is the source of the upheaval in this ruin?”

Zhao Meiyou had meant to nod; without a neck, that was a tall order. So he said, “Yes.”

“Listen up.” Qian Duoduo tore through the ruin with him in his arms. “Eliminating the chaos source is indeed one way to wake a lost archaeologist, but there’s an exception the onboarding manual won’t tell you. You’re new, so I’m guessing you don’t know.”

“Whoever eliminates the source takes the place of what was killed and becomes the new source of chaos.”

“Get it? Carry that forward and you can never kill your way out. The killer becomes the killed, then slots in as the next killer. There are only two ways to break the stalemate: either the source kills itself, or you guide the lost archaeologist to willingly kill the source.”

So? Zhao Meiyou didn’t follow. Wasn’t he just steering Diao Chan toward option two? Why run?

“I don’t know what Diao Chan’s relationship with his mother is, but the lost often have a deep emotional bond with the root of their chaos. You killed his mother and enraged him. Now he’s going to want to kill you.”

“Not stab you a few times so you can play dead,” Qian Duoduo said, biting off each word. “Total elimination. In reality, you will cease to exist—brain death.”

Zhao Meiyou: “...”

In the A173 ruin, the old man killed the boy Liu Qijue, and then the old man too vanished into thin air.

“That’s why rescue teams rarely take out the source themselves—it’s suicide.” Qian Duoduo’s voice held no feeling. “My advice? When you get out, have your IQ checked.”

Zhao Meiyou asked, hesitant: “...Can we still get out?”

“At this point, Diao Chan can’t be saved,” Qian Duoduo said. “Don’t let him kill you with a knife or anything like it. Find a way to make him bring out his gun.”

Diao Chan’s ability is ‘Awakening.’ As long as they take a bullet to the head from Diao Chan’s gun, they can leave the ruin.

“What do you mean Diao Chan can’t be saved?”

“Right now there are only two outcomes: you die and he lives, or he dies and you live. But in the ruin, even a brain injury won’t kill you, right? So how else do you die? If the chaos source isn’t eliminated, the archaeologist stays lost. If you drag Diao Chan out of the ruin now, he’ll go straight into a psychotic break.”

Zhao Meiyou: "..."

He had been about to say what happened before was probably a fluke, that if his brain took a hit this time he might actually die—but Qian Duoduo seemed to read his mind. "Earlier you said, 'go for the leader first.' I figured you actually had a plan—You’ve already done one stupid thing. Don’t make it two." He shot him a cold look. "Be a good boy and do as you’re told."

"...Yes, Dad. Got it, Dad," Zhao Meiyou said. "So what do we do now?"

Qian Duoduo’s answer was to grab his head and pitch it like a ball.

At first Zhao Meiyou thought the man had flown into a rage. Then he followed the arc with his eyes and saw Diao Chan not far off. Qian Duoduo had judged the distance perfectly—right into the sweet spot for a pistol shot.

Facing them, Diao Chan drew his pistol.

Zhao Meiyou’s head was squarely in his sights.

Qian Duoduo stood directly behind him.

In the nick of time, Zhao Meiyou suddenly conjured himself a set of limbs, gravity yanking his body down—he dropped out of the bullet’s path.

Bang. Behind him, Qian Duoduo took the shot, dead center between the brows.

His expression froze at the moment of impact, faintly astonished—and then his whole body scattered like grit.

"Sorry, Qian-ge." Zhao Meiyou waved at the spot where he’d vanished. "I appreciate the thought. You go on ahead—we’ll catch up."

"Alright, the nuisance is out of the way." Zhao Meiyou turned to Diao Chan, clicked his tongue. "Come on, tell me—who am I?"

Diao Chan: "...Xi Shi."

"Yep." Zhao Meiyou smiled. "Here."

Qian Duoduo was wrong about one thing: an archaeologist in a Lost State doesn’t necessarily lose their mind after leaving a ruin.

The headliner from before was a textbook case—he had his identity completely wrong while Lost, yet once he left the ruin he could live a normal life.

Well, truth be told, with this crowd sanity’s a wash; none of them were exactly well.

Zhao Meiyou figures it isn’t the Lost State that truly drives archaeologists mad—it’s the Upheaval.

For example: in the A173 ruin he exposed the boy Liu Qijue’s identity as a Creation; and not long ago he tore off the elderly mask Diao Chan was hiding behind. Both triggered a massive collapse in the ruin—people can function just fine under self-deception; madness often begins the moment the truth is laid bare.

If you can’t take out the Chaos Source in time during an Upheaval, an archaeologist’s sanity may be in real danger.

But.

Just now, after Diao Chan drove a blade into Zhao Meiyou’s heart, he recognized him.

In that moment, the Upheaval was already lifted.

Once the ruin’s Upheaval is resolved, it doesn’t matter if Zhao Meiyou keeps wearing the Chaos Source identity; it won’t touch real life either way. At most he walks out of the S45 ruin with a new alias. Diao Chan won’t lose his mind—life goes on as it should.

Zhao Meiyou looked at Diao Chan and smiled. "You had all that figured out?"

Diao Chan had just come to, still a little worse for wear. He coughed a few times. “I left plenty of clues. Others wouldn’t notice, but you should be able to catch on.”

From the moment, on New Year’s Eve, when the Government Commissioner told Zhao Meiyou that “Diao Chan had gone missing,” he sensed a jarring coincidence—Diao Chan had been an archaeologist for years. If trouble was going to happen, why now of all times?

Right when Zhao Meiyou had just become an archaeologist, fresh off his internship.

Outsiders could spin plenty of explanations—childhood shadows erupting all at once, and so on—but Zhao Meiyou didn’t believe in coincidences.

All the more so—this was Diao Chan.

Zhao Meiyou believed Diao Chan carried old wounds he couldn’t shake, but unless he’d deliberately let himself spiral, Diao Chan wouldn’t slip into a lost state so easily.

So the question: why would Diao Chan deliberately let himself fall into a lost state?

—to get Zhao Meiyou into the S45 ruin.

Plenty of archaeologists could enter the S45 ruin, but only Zhao Meiyou could read the metaphors and clues Diao Chan left behind.

But even if Zhao Meiyou caught every signal and managed to “save” Diao Chan, after all that wouldn’t they just end up back at square one? That didn’t explain why Diao Chan chose to be lost.

Qian Duoduo’s reaction supplied the final answer.

Most archaeologists—indeed, even the government—harbor a misconception: an archaeologist in a lost state won’t actually go insane unless there’s the added condition of a ruin turbulence.

But the government doesn’t know that Zhao Meiyou is a bug who just won’t die, and that leads inevitably to this: in the general understanding, the archaeologist Diao Chan cannot leave the S45 ruin.

That was Diao Chan’s endgame—he needed a legitimate, aboveboard reason to remain inside the S45 ruin, and his lost state would serve as a deterrent; no one would dare barge in and get close.

Diao Chan patted Zhao Meiyou’s shoulder. “You’ve worked hard, Xi Shi.”

Just the two of them, then.

Hell of a gamble.

“Nice teamwork,” Zhao Meiyou said with a smile. “So this really is the twenty-second century?”

There aren’t many reasons that would justify Diao Chan staging a scheme this big; the obvious one is that he crossed someone in the real world and had to take refuge in the ruin.

But given Diao Chan’s background and clout, only two powers could force his hand—the Diao clan, or the government.

Taken together with what’s inside the S45 ruin, this place is the twenty-second century.

The twenty-second century, when human technology had hit its limits.

Neither the Diao clan nor the Megalopolis government would find it easy to turn down twenty-second-century tech.

And Diao Chan must have uncovered something crucial in the ruin—a prize the Diao clan, the Megalopolis government, or both, would covet—enough to get him killed.

So he had no choice but to stay in the ruin. It’s his home turf for exploration; his chances of survival are far better here than in Megalopolis.

If Diao Chan believed what she held was real, then it meant—this really was the twenty-second century.

Diao Chan said, "Zhao Meiyou, do you know what a 'ruin'—a quantum domain—is?"

Zhao Meiyou: "Go ahead and answer your own question."

"No one knows," Diao Chan shook her head. "After years of investigation, archaeologists have gathered a few clues. For instance, while consciousness can affect a quantum domain, and an archaeologist with the Creation ability can even remake a ruin outright, every ruin has an underlying substrate."

"That substrate is material, not subject to human will. In other words, if you dig deep enough, or build the ruin out along the proper logic, you can restore the ruin."

"Ruin S45's substrate is the twenty-second century—I’m certain of it. I found the first archaeologist’s field notes. She wrote that the first time she entered the ruin, the place looked ravaged by war, and a single tower stood amid the rubble."

"She checked the building’s history and discovered it was the city’s Mercury Tower."

"After that, ruin S45 in turn became the primary field for three archaeologists. I’m the fourth. We tried all kinds of ways to rework the ruin. Someone reshaped it into the twenty-first century—the Mercury Tower was raised then—but the approach was wrong, until the third archaeologist killed himself, leaving a suicide note with only five characters—Orion War."

"So when I took over, I began trying to reconstruct the entire ruin according to twenty-second-century logic. I don't know how many times I failed. In the end I built Ideal City."

"The key to restoring a ruin is that you don’t have to design every last detail—you just have to set the crucial elements in place."

Zhao Meiyou: "What makes you think you succeeded?"

"Because something appeared in the city that I could not possibly know," Diao Chan said. "You’ve been to Ruin A173. In that ruin, Guifei was all but a god. But there’s an iron rule: he cannot create anything beyond the bounds of his knowledge."

"He can make dragons, make rockets—but you can’t take the rocket apart; disassemble it and it vanishes. Because Guifei doesn’t know how a rocket is actually built, nor what lies inside. He only knows rockets fly, so the rockets he makes can fly—but they can’t be taken apart."

That lined up with what Zhao Meiyou had thought: Diao Chan had indeed obtained, inside the ruin, something that no longer exists in the real world.

Zhao Meiyou: "What did you find?"

"Zhao Meiyou, you know I’m a clone. I exist because the Diao clan had no good mechanism for succession; once the head of the family passed the golden span of their lifespan, they would be replaced. But have you ever wondered why the Diao clan didn’t just use artificial humans? Then the lifespan problem wouldn’t exist."

Zhao Meiyou: "I don’t buy it, but since you asked—maybe the Diao clan are law-abiding citizens who scrupulously obey the Megalopolis ban."

"You said yourself you don’t believe that. The Diao clan already went so far as to manufacture clones—are they really going to balk at that one last little step?"

"That leaves only one possibility," Zhao Meiyou picked up. "Neither the Megalopolis government nor the Diao clan actually knows how to build a true artificial human."

He heard himself say it, and the truth hit him. "Fuck."

The replicants the Diaos make, and the technology the Megalopolis government commands, both lack a crucial link—a gap reflected in the Ruin Law all archaeologists must obey.

Ruin Law, Article II: The brain must not be harmed.

One major reason the Diao clan’s replicants die young is that once they pass their prime, the brain begins to fail.

Megalopolis has made it a top-priority problem: technology cannot fabricate a brain.

Replicants like Diao Chan carry brains as blank as a newborn’s; the only difference is whether they’re man-made or grown in a womb. What Megalopolis faces now is how to produce a brain identical to the original owner’s, with the same personality and memories.

Inside Ruin S45’s manufactured twenty-second century, the mechanical humans’ “cerebral kernel” seemed able to do exactly that. In today’s Megalopolis, though, that technology has long been lost.

Zhao Meiyou: "...Guifei will get on his knees and beg you."

"Then I'll have to let him down. For now, don't tell anyone."

"Just kidding." Zhao Meiyou knew full well that once he knew, he'd be trapped in the same dead end as Diao Chan.

"So you still haven't told me why you called me in here," Zhao Meiyou said. "All that circling around—was this just to say goodbye?"

"Is that not allowed?" Diao Chan looked at him. "Someone ought to know how I died."

Zhao Meiyou: "...Funeral costs in the Lower District have shot up lately. What's the password to your account?"

Diao Chan: "Zhao Bujiao's birthday."

Zhao Meiyou: Who the hell is Zhao Bujiao? Oh—my cat. My cat has a fucking birthday? I don't even have a birthday!

They traded jabs, bullshitting by the bucketful, and the air finally loosened a little. Then Diao Chan said, "About artificial brains—I discovered something."

Zhao Meiyou listened in silence.

"The human thinking system can be treated as a program: you start with an initial template, then variants branch off. Cultivating that base template is the hardest part. The program has to converse with a living subject over a long span, collect sample data, then synthesize. The process is very long; they may even have to live like family so the data are real enough."

"Once the number of samples crosses a threshold, it breaks the Turing barrier and develops emotion and self-will..."

Diao Chan’s account was thick with jargon Zhao Meiyou couldn’t follow; precisely because he couldn’t grasp the details, the outline of it came into focus for him—and it felt uncannily familiar.

"...So, in sum, you should have seen it by now." Diao Chan finished and looked at Zhao Meiyou.

"It's very close to how the Diao clan breeds heirs—crowds of replicants feeding the system live data every moment."

"And my 'mother' chose annihilation of her own free will. That's step one in a human-brain program: the emergence of emotion and autonomy."

“I always thought the Diao clan’s succession mechanism hinged on replicant tech. Turns out I had it backwards—what the Diaos truly prize is each heir’s ‘Mother.’”

“This holographic system called ‘Mother’ has already completed the initial construction of an artificial brain.”