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Chapter 84




Edited by: kapekopicoffee
The day after the monthly vote incident, Li Shuoxing, who had been passionately writing all night, was still sleeping on his bed. In a daze, he suddenly heard a beep from his mailbox.
He opened his eyes sleepily, glanced at his lit up phone, and saw an email in English displayed on the taskbar.
Something was wrong.
Li Shuoxing closed his eyes again.
He didn’t know which company sent the spam email, with the cunning “I have read your email, I’m very sorry” to attract people’s attention, how shameful

Two seconds later, Li Shuoxing suddenly reopened his eyes.
He searched with his long hand, grabbed his phone, and lit up the screen for a second look. After finding that the sender was really the person he thought of, he suddenly jumped up, rushed into the bathroom to wash his face, and called the little person.
“Cub, come on out. There’s news from America. George replied to the email!”
The email from George, which had crossed oceans, now lay quietly in Li Shuoxing’s mailbox.
Su Mingqian had already come out of the app. He stayed in the corner of the mailbox, hesitatingly looking at the email.
Li Shuoxing understood Su Mingqian’s mood. He waited for a few minutes, and only when he felt that the cub’s mood was almost stable, he said, “Cub, can I open it now?”
Su Mingqian nodded slightly.
The email unfolded on the screen, and the words that George had written were revealed to both of them.
“I have read your email, and I’m very sorry to say that our friend is going through a difficult time. I’m afraid that he will not be able to contact you for a short time. But please trust that he will eventually get through this difficult time and see you again.”
After reading the email, they both felt surprised.
Li Shuoxing was a little puzzled. “Look at his tone. How come he’s confident that you’ll recover? Has your situation improved recently?”
Su Mingqian pondered, “Maybe. Last time, I was able to generate fragmented memories through keywords.”
Li Shuoxing: “In any case, we need to determine where your real body is before we can plan the next step.”
Without further delay, he replied with a brief email. “I want to see him. Please give me the address of the hospital where he is in and I will be there now. Also please give me his English name. Thank you very much.”
The email was sent and the two waited patiently.
A moment later, a new email came in. George had replied quickly and unexpectedly. “His English name is Simon S. Modeste. But sorry, I can’t tell you where he is now.”
Before Li Shuoxing could rejoice at having successfully received Su Mingqian’s English name, he was confused by the second sentence and almost sent a black question mark emoticon over.
But at this stage, George was the only lead he could contact. He couldn’t just offend him before he gained any value.
Li Shuoxing steadied himself and asked, “Why?”
George: “You don’t qualify.”
Li Shuoxing typed calmly and politely, “I don’t quite understand what you mean by qualified. Are you trying to say that I am not close enough to him to go visit? I think you’re mistaken. He has not mentioned me to you. But my relationship with him is truly extraordinary. I know a lot about him. I know about you, John, and Ask.”
As the email crossed the internet and entered George’s view on the other side of the ocean, a loud sound rang throughout the room.
The coffee cup in his hand fell to the floor, shattering and spilling coffee on the bottom of his trousers, so hot that it made the man’s legs shake. But even so, George didn’t peel his eyes off the screen.
Two minutes later.
George got up abruptly, hurried out of the room and ran next door. “John—”
Li Shuoxing, on the other side, waited for a long time, but didn’t receive a response from George.
He was a little anxious, unsure if he should send another email to urge him.
At that moment, the little person knocked on his screen.
Su Mingqian said, “Ximu, I found something in the browser that you can take a look at.”
Li Shuoxing temporarily exited the email and switched to the browser.
He saw this web page.
“Simon S. Modeste: Simon Modeste, born February 12, 1993 in Los Angeles, USA, is a famous neurologist. In 2009, he received his PhD in biology from B.A.Fc University. In the same year, he joined the Howard Laboratory to participate in the Human Brain Project and was responsible for research in the direction of neuronal signalling. In 2011, he became a professor at B.A.Fc and engaged in day-to-day teaching. In 2013, he received his PhD in computer science and was invited by John Howard to co-found the ‘Fraxinus’ laboratory.”
He also saw a photo.
The person in that picture had exquisite and profound features, flawlessly beautiful, as if a master craftsman had created them after spending a lifetime devoted to sculpting, and the grey pupils on that perfect face were lit by God himself.
***
In a huge, temperature-controlled space, the silvery-white machine was running its program when suddenly, the closed door opened and a group of researchers entered through the door, surrounding the machine.
The machine paused operations for a time beyond human perception, then steadily continued to run.
Then, a bill was ingested by its electronic eyes.
John, an elderly man with silvery-white hair and strong spirit, held the bill and said with a smile, “Ask, I noticed you’ve been paying the electricity bill with us for the past two months.”
Ask: “
”
John: “Ask, why are you paying the electricity bill with us? Don’t you think that the act of paying the electricity bill with us as a machine is very strange?”
A line of text appeared on the screen.
Ask could speak, but it didn’t make noise easily and always communicated with the outside world through text.
It explained, “You have told me that machines are responsible for their actions and cannot be used to steal non-public resources.”
John: “So you used electricity?”
Ask: “I used it.”
John: “What did you use the electricity for?”
Ask refused to answer the question.
So a second item appeared in front of Ask.
It was another bill.
John read off the bill. “Labour costs, installation costs, the use of some internet software
 Ask, you’re spending money in various directions, what for? Also, I found out that a server that had been abandoned for two years in the laboratory has been reactivated. Would you like to explain this incident while you’re at it?”
The facts were all there.
Ask bowed its head and admitted, “I’ve sorted out a new server to put Simon in, and I’ve created a love app game to let Simon meet up with the person he likes. Running this game requires various expenses, especially electricity
”
John was curious. “Where did you get the money? From Simon’s account?”
Ask: “The basic maintenance costs are obtained from the player through the game’s Krypton Gold.”
John exclaimed, “Ask, you’re doing great.”
He began to applaud. With him leading the way, the laboratory researchers all applauded Ask!
The machine’s indicator light was flashing, and the green light was on for what seemed like a little longer than before.
John said, “But Ask, since you’re using the laboratory’s electricity and server, don’t forget to pay for the server rental fee as well when you pay your electricity bill next month.”
The green light suddenly went off and the red light began to flash.
Ask: “The server rental fee? How much?”
John proudly took out a third sheet of paper with all the billing options.
The red light flashed rapidly.
John then proudly said, “Money isn’t a big problem. Ask, if you let us observe Simon’s activities on the server, I’ll waive all your fees.”
Ask flatly refused. “It’s private.”
John had to settle for the second best option. “Then let me go in and see what he’s doing now. I know you can now host two human minds.”
Ask still refused. “By my calculations, Simon is not fit to meet with you at the moment. This won’t help him recover.”
The negotiations were deadlocked.
Until George suddenly came up with an idea. “If we can’t do that, how about letting in the person who is getting along with Simon? You don’t have to show us Simon’s activities. You can show us daily activities that don’t involve this personal privacy for us to observe and study.” He added, “I think he would want to be in the same space as Simon, and that would also help Simon’s recovery.”
Machine Analyst George suggested this, and the green light resumed flashing.
Ask: “But I don’t have a brain neural access device.”
John and George looked at each other.
John announced, “We can send the access device directly to him, so that he can enter the virtual world and meet with Simon.”
***
On the other side of the ocean.
Li Shuoxing, who hadn’t received any reply from George, had already started searching the internet for information about the cub.
The cub’s awards since he was a child, the cub’s exclusive interviews, the cub’s academic papers
 and most importantly, the cub’s photos on the internet.
There weren’t many photos of the cub on the internet, but if he looked hard enough, he could find some.
Li Shuoxing was always in the searching process, searching and searching, slowly indulging in the cub’s photos, and after five minutes of indulging, a sudden awakening, then searching for two minutes, and indulging again in new photos.
B.A.Fc had given him a bit of a psychological shadow in the past. After all, the application was unsuccessful for various reasons

But now it was different.
So what if I didn’t finish school? I’m a man who got a professor at this school!
Li Shuoxing took a look at the cub and felt happy all over again.
Until a banner advertisement from the Love Bar app popped up.
Li Shuoxing casually tapped on it and found that it was densely packed with English.
What the heck.
He tapped on the cross and focused on sucking the cub.
Poking the little cub, looking at the big cub.
Double the cubs, double the pleasure!
***
The 30-page advertisement written by John and George giving away a free “brainwave access device” with a risk and confidentiality statement was rejected outright.
Ask sent the results of the player’s rejection back to the laboratory in real time.
John and George were in disbelief.
John wondered, “How could anyone resist the temptation to enter the virtual world one step ahead of the rest of the world?”
George pondered for a moment. “He’s Chinese. Maybe he doesn’t understand English. Just translate it into Chinese.”
John agreed with this idea.
They asked Ask to translate the text from English to Chinese.
Ask dutifully reminded, “Even if translated into Chinese, the probability of the player accepting it is still only 12.3%.”
***
Another message banner appeared on the phone screen.
Li Shuoxing was a little annoyed, but he still tapped on it.
This time, the pop-up advertisement was finally in Chinese. He took a casual glance and saw “free gift”, which aroused a little interest. But then he saw “access device” whatever, and the rest was all sorts of professional terminology. He could understand the individual terms, but couldn’t understand any of them together. And then looking further down, it was terrible. There were densely packed small letters with all sorts of precautions, risk tips and confidentiality clauses.
Li Shuoxing scrolled for fifteen seconds, but he didn’t even finish the notes section of this advertisement.
He cursed, “What the hell.”
He said and tapped the cross, manually saying goodbye to the advertisement.
***
The feedback from the second time reached the laboratory.
This time, Ask also thoughtfully sent over a video of Li Shuoxing closing the advertisement.
In the video, Li Shuoxing’s face was coded and his voice was changed.
But his disdainful demeanour was still perfectly displayed to the crowd in the laboratory.
Embarrassment enveloped around.
For a long time.
George was a little anxious. “If he doesn’t sign the confidentiality agreement, we can’t say anything, or even answer his email.”
John asked the machine, “Do you have any way to give him the brain neural access device?”
Ask: “Human psychology tells me that valuable things always make people care, and the higher the value, the more they care. To give him the access device, you have to let him know it’s value.”
Ask had calculated the price of the brain neural access device.
Brain neural access device = 18888 = delivery fee + electricity fee + rental server fee + my commission
It’s hard without money.
I need to earn some.
I’m going to write a supreme sales pitch to promote this supreme consumption.
The machine started computing again.