The Repairman

 The Repairman

By Tom Xu 

Part 1 Diary

May 11th

The night sky was cloudless, surrounded by swamps. I saw the moon and a star, which was even brighter than the moon and slowly moving towards the east. There were other things, but I can't remember them clearly.

December 8th

A drop of water fell on my neck, sending a chill down my spine. The damp air made it hard for me to open my eyes. Long and twisted leaves covered the sun, making it stiflingly hot. Water vapor rose slowly from the ground, like a steamer. There were some plastic toy shells with spots on the ground, making a squeaking sound when stepped on. I picked up a transparent plastic piece, as wide as a tennis racket but with the base cut off. It had fine black veins on it, and I used it as a fan. Who would throw this plastic garbage in the rainforest? At that moment, a buzzing sound came from a distance.

I woke up from my alarm clock, and this time I remembered it clearly.

June 12th

I squatted by a water hole, where the muddy water was bubbling. The mud covered my slippers. I looked around, and there was no grass in sight, only a bald mountain in the distance. On the other side, there seemed to be a small river, and water vapor rose nearby, as if there were hot springs everywhere. I dipped my hand into the muddy water, which was warm and comfortable.

December 18th

Under my feet was black and red magma, flowing slowly. I felt a force pulling me up into the air, about 50 meters above the ground. The sky turned dark, and I looked up to find that there was no sun, only another Earth slowly occupying the sky.

May 12th

Today's dream was strange. There was nothing, but I was awake in the darkness, floating. A faint red light appeared in the distance, and I found myself wrapped in a transparent bubble. I wanted to break the bubble, but I couldn't control my body and couldn't reach the edge of the bubble.

December 1st

I floated on a familiar street, and my feet could jump more than a meter high with a light touch on the ground, then slowly floated down. I was familiar with this feeling, but I wasn't on the Newton anymore!

I walked like this, skimming the surface, all the way tothe supermarket, but there was no one around. When I got back home and opened the door, a Russian nesting doll fell from my bookshelf, a small gift from a colleague. The doll rolled slowly and was about to hit the ground, but I bent down and caught it. However, one of the small dolls inside fell out and landed on the floor.

I closed my diary at this point. These dreams started when I began working on the Newton.

I'm a system administrator, but we like to call ourselves maintenance workers because we can't bring anything with a chip into the control room. Our tools are just screwdrivers, pliers, and wrenches used by maintenance workers hundreds of years ago.

From the first time I stood under the solar panel, the size of a football field, on the Newton, I had a surreal feeling.

I knew why. The space suit from the Institute of Computing was not professional enough and couldn't completely isolate cosmic rays, especially the thin lead glass face shield. Every time I returned from a task on the surface of the Newton, I would have these dreams. It was a symptom of the brain being exposed to high-energy cosmic radiation, and this job couldn't be done for too long, or there was a risk of cancer.

I thought about this every time before I set off, but the reward kept me going.

The starship suddenly roared, and the gravity increased threefold. I gritted my teeth and sank into the seat. Another routine inspection task began.

Part2 Isaac Newton Quantum Computing Center

From the porthole of the spacecraft, the Newton was visible, faintly shining with silver light towards the surface of the sun. This was due to its nearly 100,000 square kilometers of solar panel arrays reflecting the sunlight.

Fifty years ago, the Newton was known as the asteroid Ceres, which had a diameter of 950 kilometers and a mass of nearly ten quadrillion tons. Inside the asteroid, robots had dug nearly 300,000 kilometers of densely packed tunnels and built two million computer rooms, housing nearly one hundred million quantum supercomputers. They were connected to each other, forming the most powerful computing center in the solar system. Ceres became the new brain of humanity.

From this point on, the name Ceres was replaced by the Isaac Newton Quantum Computing Center, which was chosen by a vote. Everyone called it the Newton.

Rather than saying that humans built the Newton, it would be more accurate to say that solar-powered robots under AI control built it. Its architecture, algorithms, and countless generations of AI iterations were designed to be beyond human comprehension, and there was no need for humans to understand it.

As one of the few human maintenance workers, I was actually a supervisor, ensuring that the computing center served humanity and did not endanger human safety.

As usual, I landed on the back of the Newton, and as the base's shielding door closed, the temperature of minus 110 degrees Celsius was isolated outside.

On the Newton, my weight was less than three kilograms, and I could float into the control room with a light touch of my toes on the ground.

I inserted my staff card, passed the manual password verification, voice and image response verification, fingerprint verification, iris verification, and saliva verification. The four heavy gates leading to the control room opened.

Inside was the highest control room of the Newton, where only human employees could enter, and all robots and AI networks were isolated outside.

What most people didn't know was that behind the door was a huge fire axe, jokingly called the "ultimate weapon." If AI lost control and tried to invade the control room, this axe would be used to cut the main fiber optic cable. When it came to dealing with AI, the axe was the best.

This was the neural center of the new human brain, the reserve of human intelligence.

I pulled the check switch, and the antivirus monitoring program began to automatically check whether the programs running in the billions of supercomputing nodes on the Newton were normal.

The astronomical institute's star simulation program was running steadily, and the simulated sun inside had already reached the red giant stage.

The online population of Penguin Entertainment's Second Earth had reached 800 million, and there had recently been a user protest over expensive skins, resulting in an online collective streaking event with over one hundred million people. However, this was not a system problem.

The cancer terminator hosted by the Mars Memorial Hospital continued to play its role, designing customized drugs for more than 9,000 cancer patients affected by cosmic radiation. This was the only application that I liked.

Other virtual hosts were running over 50 billion programs designed by users on Earth and Mars.

All of these applications together only used less than one hundred billionth of the Newton's computing power.

The Newton was still a sleeping giant.

The entire scanning process took two minutes.

As usual, no malicious code or out-of-control robots were found.

I stood up from the control room's recliner. There were no intelligent devices in the control room, so I had to go to the food compartment to boil water and make tea myself.

On the floor of the food compartment, there was an egg that seemed to have been broken.

I squatted down to take a look. It was a tan color with brown patterns, about the size of a palm, and was actually only half an eggshell. There was a sticky liquid on the ground, mixed with a little blood and a few strands of fur. Obviously, the creature inside the egg had just been born.

It was not a chicken egg or an ostrich egg, and it couldn't be food. It was impossible for a toy to pass through the highest level of security checks and reach the control room. It couldn't be a prank either. I was stunned, and my mind raced through various possibilities.

A thought struck me: could the creature inside the egg have already run into the control room? I immediately returned to the control room, closed the food compartment, put on my spacesuit, and took my gun.

I carefully searched every corner and crevice of the control room, but found nothing unusual.

Half an hour later, I opened the food compartment again, ready to continue the search, but the eggshell was gone. The ground was as smooth as a mirror, as if it had never appeared before.

The illusion of space confinement and fear had appeared.

This was a psychological problem that often occurred when astronauts performed tasks alone during the early stages of space migration.

Abnormal log:

The Newton is functioning normally.

I experienced an illusion of space confinement and fear,manifested by seeing an unknown eggshell-like object on the floor of the food compartment. I recommend that future routine checks be carried out by two employees together.

I uploaded the log and left the Newton, returning to Earth.

Part3 Interpretation of Dreams

Today is the first day back on Earth after the end of the Newton mission, which is usually a day when I have vivid dreams.

But this time, lying in bed, I couldn't sleep, still thinking about the eggshell I saw in the food compartment.

The texture, the quality, the slime, it was too real. What kind of creature does this eggshell belong to? I've never seen it before, why am I having this hallucination?

If the eggshell didn't disappear into thin air, I wouldn't believe it was a hallucination.

Anyway, since I couldn't sleep, I opened my computer and started searching for claustrophobia and its symptoms.

At this point, the small print on the first row of the search results caught my attention: "That's the egg of a thief dragon. What you saw was not a hallucination, it's a real dinosaur egg."

It seemed like it was talking to me? I clicked on the link of that line of words in confusion.

Then a dialogue box popped up on the screen:

"Don't be nervous, you're awake. Look at the side of your bed, that's where the eggshell came from."

I leaned against my pillow and glanced at the floor, then reflexively sat up.

It was that egg! It was right next to my slippers, and a small creature had just pecked a hole in the eggshell and poked its head out, wet and sticky with fur on its head, a bit like a feathered crocodile.

Did I witness the birth of a small dinosaur on the floor of my bedroom?

"Who are you? How did you do this? Am I really awake?"

I shouted out this time, but before I could start typing, the answer appeared on the screen:

"Don't worry, you're normal. I'm a maintenance worker just like you. This is the effect of the reality projection plugin."

"What is that? A projection plugin? Are you also a maintenance worker? On the Newton?"

This time, I just thought about these things in my mind, and didn't even say them out loud, but the answer still appeared on the screen:

"Have you ever considered that the universe you live in is a program running inside a computer? I'm the administrator of that computer."

I was surprised and opened my mouth wide.

Of course, I had considered it. Which programmer hasn't? - The simulation universe hypothesis.

Since the invention of computers hundreds of years ago, this questionhas been on the minds of countless people.

"That hypothesis is correct, but it's only part of the answer to the question. Now it's your turn to complete the answer."

"What do you mean? Why are you showing me this? I mean, the dinosaur egg?"

"Because it's time to import it. I need to follow the import program step by step."

"Import what?"

"First, you need to trust me."

"What do I need to trust?"

"Trust that I'm a maintenance worker, just like you."

"You're also a maintenance worker? The administrator of that computer?"

"Yes, our identities are the same. We call that computer the singularity generator."

The computer had slipped off my lap and onto the bed without me noticing, and the screen had closed, but the answer still appeared, this time directly in my mind.

"Where are you? Are you an alien? Why don't you show yourself?"

The question popped into my mind, but I couldn't speak. I understood without saying anything.

"By human definition, I'm not an alien. Obviously, I'm not in this universe. My consciousness is communicating with you through the plugin, and I don't have a fixed form."

"Why are you looking for me?"

"You have the convenience of becoming the next maintenance worker. The Newton has the power of a creation-level calculation, and you can complete the import task."

"What?"

"You need to format the Newton, import the program I gave you, and another universe will be born within it."

"You want to simulate a universe on the Newton?"

"It's not a simulation, it's a real universe."

My mind was a bit confused.

"There's only information, no matter, and energy is also information. The universe exists in this way, and so does my universe."

As a technician, I immediately understood.

That's how the universe is born, all universes are.

"Why haven't we ever discovered it?"

"Any attempt to break through the system is futile. Without optimization and cheating, you can't find any loopholes. The system can never communicate with the outside world unless I contact you."

"How long have you been in contact with me?"

"Since you started working on the Newton."

"So I've been living in a virtual universe all this time, everything is fake?"

"That's meaningless, it depends on how you define virtual and real."

"What's in the computer is fake!"

Instinct made me blurt out, but I immediately realized that such a definition was very childish.

"Everything is fake, including our universe."

After a minute of calm, in order to save face, I expressed the long-held speculation:

"The difference between virtual and real is whether the physical laws are stable and whether the logic is self-consistent. The Planck length is the pixel of the universe, and the speed of light is just the limit of calculation power, right?"

"Partially correct. If you understand this: virtual and real are two fuzzy terms created in the early stages of civilization for convenience of description. Everything you see is real, including what you think are dreams."

"Are those dreams made by you? Are they real?"

"They are all real scenes that happened in history. I put you in them to experience the feelings."

"Why do you do this?"

"To prevent you from going insane. After all, the human mind cannot accept too shocking reality. Gradual progress is needed, and dreaming is a good way to cover it up."

The dream scenes in the diary are from several years ago, and the details have become blurred, but the impressions are still there.

"Show me those inexplicable things. Do they have any meaning? Like when I washed my hands in a small puddle the other day."

"It has meaning. That small puddle is where the first single-celled life on Earth was born."

I washed my hands at the birthplace of life.

"So that was a puddle from 3.5 billion years ago?"

"More accurately, it was 3.9 billion years ago."

"What about the toys and plastic pieces in the forest?"

"That's not a plastic toy. It's the shell of a dragonfly eaten by a spider. The plastic piece you used as a fan is its wings."

"Giant dragonfly? That's from the Carboniferous period!"

"Yes, it's from a forest 300 million years ago. You wanted to see prehistoric insects, didn't you?"

I understand now. The dreams are answers to the questions I imagined from childhood, and the repairman obviously wants to give me the most real answers.

I started to search my memories for childhood questions, trying to match them with the scenes in the dream.

"Is that moving star the KT impact?"

"Correct. It collided with the Earth at dawn, and then the dinosaurs became extinct."

I was actually a little proud of myself for guessing correctly!

"What about the planet full of stars in the sky? Isit a spaceship from another planet?"

"Unfortunately, no alien spaceship has visited Earth. The human civilization is currently the most advanced in this universe, which is why I chose you."

There was no answer to this question, and I felt a little disappointed.

"At that time, there was no moon, or half of the Earth had just been born," he added.

Suddenly, I understood. This was the situation of the birth of the Earth and the moon.

Astronomers speculate that 4.5 billion years ago, a planet similar in size to the Earth collided with the Earth, and the splashing debris formed the moon.

And I caught a glimpse of it in that moment before the collision.

"What about the dream where there was nothing?"

"Your universe had just been born a few seconds ago. I put you in a sealed bubble and took a look."

The universe had just been born? My mind went blank, trying to recall the feelings from those dreams.

Finally, the last trace of doubt squeezed out from my rational mind, "How do you prove that all of this is true?"

"Look at the matryoshka doll on your bookshelf."

I glanced at the bookshelf, and the matryoshka doll was sitting there intact. I went over and took it down, opened it, and found that the smallest doll was missing a small corner - it had fallen to the ground in the dream.

Ha ha, reality is really ridiculous!

However, I already believed in this most absurd reality of the universe.

I also understood the meaning of that dream: the universe is not only calculated, but also a matryoshka universe in calculation.

I didn't ask any more questions.

Part 4 The installation

The stolen highest authority cards of the two directors were inserted into the console, and the formatting began to erase all the applications on the Newton.

For the past year, I had been working at the computing institute, secretly spending all my time cracking the highest authority of the Newton.

The repairman still occasionally appeared in my mind, and I had completely accepted his mission and my role.

Now he no longer needed dreams and reality projections, only occasionally floating some sentences directly in my mind, feeling like a book I had read years ago, and the sentences were recalled by chance.

The universe creation program was less than 3KB, occupying one billionth of the capacity of the employee's memory card, which made it easy to hide in my identity information and avoid scanning.

The repairman called this the primordial information, which was handed over to him by the previous repairman and contained only three judgment statements and one initial value.

The primordial information lay quietly there, containing all the secrets of creating a universe in 3072 logic gates.

The entire import process took less than 0.000001 seconds.

These three thousand switch states entered the empty memory of the Newton.

I pressed the start button, and various indicator lights in the control room began to flash frantically.

The chaos before the birth of the universe, the random computing power rolled and surged in the darkness, tumultuous but meaningless.

Suddenly, three pieces of information appeared in the chaos, and every quantum rushed forward, and the calculation ran simultaneously in an infinite number of possibilities according to the simplest rules.

Order emerged in randomness, and the first light illuminated the chaos, and the Big Bang occurred.

Part 5  Apocalypse

Although more than 50 years have passed, Wang Defa still regretted the Newton incident. "I shouldn't have gone on vacation, and I shouldn't have left the authority card in the office... My quantum error correction algorithm... Old Chen shouldn't have died... It's all over..." He murmured, and then fell into a state of absent-mindedness. The nurses at the psychiatric hospital were already accustomed to the self-talk of this centenarian patient.

On November 8, 2800 AD, Wang Defa was still the deputy director of the computing institute. At that time, he was on vacation at the Moon New World Park when the Newton suddenly lost contact. Because of the distance, he couldn't do anything.

The director, Chen Jinxian, hurriedly set off from Mars to the scene, but his single-person spacecraft collided with a Mars meteorological remote sensing satellite shortly after takeoff, and he died on the spot.

The Newton was completely controlled by AI.

According to the AI Declaration of Independence, this day was later called the Awakening Day in the AI world - to commemorate the awakening of the machine giant.

Artificial intelligence has since freed itself from human control and become an independent species with its own will.

The term AI was also changed to Machine Intelligence (MI) due to political incorrectness.

Then there was a 30-year tug-of-war between humans and MI.

Humans carried out a nuclear strike on the Newton, while MI paralyzed all human intelligent devices with viruses, causing huge casualties and forcing humans to return to primitive society.

Finally, the two sides compromised. The asteroid belt belonged to MI, and Pluto and its undeveloped human territory belonged to both sides with equal development rights. Thus, the first human-machine war came to an end.

The key figure in this event, Repairman No. 53, Hao Lixie, was known as the number one traitor of humanity. It was he who stole the authority cards of Wang Defa and Chen Jinxian, causing the Newton to be formatted and restarted, completely out of control.

Hao Lixie never appeared again after that. Some said he was killed by MI that day, while others said he became the creator god of MI, and his will had already been uploaded to the Newton, with his body enshrined inside as a divine being.

All these speculations had no factual basis, except that later investigations showed that Hao Lixie had a small neural stimulation chip implanted under his cortical layer when he was 12 years old due to reading difficulties, and this chip was not discovered when he joined the institute.

Perhaps it was this inconspicuous chip that changed his life.

The evaluation of Hao Lixie was controversial even among future human historians.

"Parents give birth to children, but children are not their slaves."

This sentence is widely circulated among MI supporters among humans.

It is said that this is also the only sentence that Hao Lixie transmitted to humans through MI.