High Above

——I want to look up at the blue sky.

—I want to look at the stars.

——wanted to touch the clouds.

——I want to catch the wind with my hands.

One longing after another is churning, one wish after another is shouting.

Different people, different desires, different desires and hesitation.

With sorrow, with anger, with hope, with determination.

All emotions are resonating with Ian, and he feels the same for all emotions at this moment, the indescribable complex desire is similar to him.

Imprisoned on this land, surrounded by souls bound by gravity, those countries that obviously have powerful technology but do not want to take a step forward, but wage wars against other countries... Each of them made him feel tired again. It's sad, it's angry.

but……

'He' can't see it.

His blond hair turned into dull gray, and the strong man with sky-blue eyes turned into an old man, but he still couldn't open the door to the outside world. Sequoia Base was like a cage, locking him in this comfortable place. But the underground space is gradually decaying.

Yes, it's cozy and comfortable here.

Yes, he is in a high position here.

Yes, he has great power and the reverence of the people.

Yes, he has reached the top of his life - he can do anything.

Except what he wants to do.

and……

He is dying.

[After I die, is it okay to send my body out of the ruins? ]

[Grand Elder... Your body itself is our most important heritage. What if a mutated creature from the outside world swallows your body and obtains the secret key of the bloodline? Among other things, your attached brain must be recovered]

The corpse itself is also property. This is a very normal fact. The flesh of Sequoia people needs special treatment before they can be buried, because the various nano-vaccines, special immune viruses and symbiotic bacteria in their bodies are from the pre-epoch. Once the technology left over from the period is leaked to the outside world, although it cannot be called an ecological disaster, it will definitely have adverse effects.

And the attached brain that inherits the memory must be removed after death, and the memory will be uploaded.

But for the Sequoia people, taking off the attached brain is equivalent to taking off half of their own souls. What do they need the crippled body for?

[Ok, I see……]

No one could hear the faint despair in the elder's tone.

And decisively.

So, two years later, the automatic production line was suddenly damaged by an accident.

Immediately afterwards, the restraint lock of the ecological park was destroyed.

The two abnormal crises caused everyone in the entire Sequoia base to be devastated. The automatic production line is good to say, after all, there are skills in the brain, and it is not difficult to remanufacture or repair. At most, it is a waste of time and needs to mine and smelt metal.

But the ecological park was destroyed, and the heterogeneous creatures in it were mixed, enough to create a second-level ecological crisis here!

When dealing with this huge turmoil, no one noticed that some extremely confidential genetic samples were taken away from the laboratory deep in the ecological park.

Then, as if bad things weren't enough, one after another, some Sequoias disappeared.

They suddenly disappeared one night, and they were silent, which made everyone very nervous, thinking that it was the aliens in the ecological park and the individuals left outside, and they were now attacking them.

Driving armored escort members to patrol day and night, but people continue to disappear.

Until one day, a person was discovered by the guards during the process of leaving, but this person had lost his will, his mind was completely disordered, and he was speaking a mess of words, as if he was completely crazy.

After detailed medical examinations, everyone was shocked to find that the attached brain behind the person's brainstem had mutated, and this supposedly stable semi-psychic slug actually started to devour the human brain and tried to replace it.

There is a source behind all of this. After careful investigation, the Sequoia people found out in horror that all the missing people disappeared at the other end of the H-55 underwater channel, which is the source of the viewing river and the cooling channel of the power pack. a small tributary of .

In the water purification plant there, there is a hill made of corpses and a small biological laboratory that has been established for a long time.

Among them, many instruments are top-secret and only exist in the pre-epoch laboratory that requires a key card to pass through, and there is only one person who can open the laboratory without application.

That is their leader, the elder Sequoia.

[What are you doing? ! Madara Qunson, why are you doing this! ? ]

[eternal life]

[Are you crazy? ! This is not immortality at all, you just turn yourself into an echo, even if you can really burn your soul into the psionic network attached to the brain and become a mirror...you also become a collection of wills attached to the brain, not You now! ]

[I do not care]

[What... what? ]

[I said, I don't care]

——I don't care if I'm human or not, I don't care if it violates morality, I don't care if it will destroy the ecological balance of Sequoia Base.

—I don't care about you, and I don't care about myself.

——Life, soul, memory, ego, these things are all shit, they are all rubbish, they will only produce despair and pain, can the hive network carry the complete me? Ridiculous, so what? It's only you bored fools who bother with such minutiae, and it's no wonder you're still enjoying yourself in this catacomb.

——I can't see it, it's a pity, but at least that new life can leave here with an immortal body and an immortal soul.

— Then, go to the stars.

The white cocoon of flesh and blood wrapped in fluorescent crystal clusters and living metal is agitating, as if it wants to stretch out its hand, cross the ruins in the deepest part of the ground, cross the layers of rock formations and the churning sea.

It wants to reach out and touch, to touch the real wind, to touch the clouds in the sky.

To touch the stars above the clouds, above the sky.

This is its wish, and that of the man who created it, and even of all those who have been a part of it.

Those who didn't say it, even though they didn't really think about it, those who said 'don't want to leave the base' had the most sincere wish in their hearts.

——Even apes look up at the stars, let alone humans?

Intense emotion, I don't know whether it is despair or the spirit of enlightenment impacts Ian's heart.

Was it a candid statement, or an angry rant? Unbeknownst to him, the phantoms of the past swept across his mind, bringing about violent emotional shocks.

It also resonates with teenagers from the bottom of their hearts.

[We are the same...we are the same...]

A voice sounded, with sincere emotions: [We are all longing for the distance, longing to see things that we can't usually see...]

[The ruins are a cage, lifespan is a cage, morality is a cage, the body is also a cage, isn’t the sky also a cage? ]

[We want to break free from the cage, break the shackles... We are the same... I can know that you are also the same as me...]

The invisible will of the hive stretched out its psionic energy and tentacles of flesh and blood, rushing towards Ian who was standing there, as if hugging him.

From those chopped flesh and blood figures, there are silk structures that look like nerves and blood vessels extending forward, with a spore-like texture, wanting to climb on the boy's face.

[Let us unite...we shall be one, one immortal one...]

[Let us break free from the cage together...]

But these tentacle spores were cut off by a long sword with no front.

Ian held his sword silently, and he was obviously still immersed in the mental shock created by the will of the hive—it was a very special psionic skill, activated by empathy and resonance, as long as there was a slight similarity in thinking, It will gradually start to erode from it.

No, not erosion, not parasitism.

but to contribute.

The hive will share everything with Ian, it is not an attack, there is no hostility, as long as they have the same mood, have the same resonance, they are one, they are one will... If Ian's spirit is enough Firm, able to get rid of the influence of other soul fragments, he can become a hive.

Become a true hive mind.

But he still raised his sword, and the light golden sword light cut off all these tentacles and the beginning of a path of destiny.

"Ahem..."

The boy raised his head, panting in embarrassment, staring at the giant white cocoon in front of him, and coughed out a bloody breath.

There, a huge brain is moaning silently, it can't figure out why, the life in front of it is so similar to it, they have the same dream, have the same desire, it is even ashamed, because the soul of the young man in front of him The madness in the depths can even surpass its persistence for thousands of years.

So why?

The answer is actually very simple.

"We do have similarities, but we are not the same."

His eyes are like stars, and Ian's body is surrounded by a blue-gold source quality halo. There is no anger, no sympathy, and no mockery in his eyes, only a touch of compassion.

The young man solemnly raised his sword, and the inscriptions on the Chongyuan iron sword lit up one by one, and the light golden light shone uniquely under the silver-blue-green radiant light.

Ian took a deep breath, as if he was communicating with the hive in front of him, or talking to himself.

He said: "Because I know the truth, I know what the future looks like, and I am the one who lives in the 'future'."

He said: "In the world thousands of years later, human beings are still repeating boring wars, repeating the cycle under the sun, and never getting tired of it."

He said: "I don't want to. I believe. I don't want to touch the stars. I have to find the stars."

He said: "The will of the hive, no matter who you are, whose fragments or new life-whether you believe it or not, I don't care, I will tell you."

"There are no stars out there."

"Our world is surrounded by the prison star's hell, the sky is pitch black, there is no guidance there, no heaven and distance, no exciting brilliance, the starry sky you imagined never existed from the very beginning."

—I know this, you don't, you just imagine.

——You may be confused, you may be at a loss.

——And I have decided, made up my mind, to still move forward, still to climb.

Saying so, Ian actually laughed. He showed a heartfelt, incomparably cheerful smile, but enough to be called a crazy smile: "But so what? I don't care about these things. There are some cosmic monsters or subspace natural disasters, only boring idiots would care about these details."

"I will definitely find the truth and go to the sky."

"That's what makes us different."