Brief Intro: Our Metaverse Genesis is a sci-fi novel(Translate by 🐦@0xRealBurgerking; CMO@OurMetaverse DAO). The story starts 100 years later from now, which is year 2122 , welcome you all to OURM. OURM is a Giant multi-metaverse system, and our main characters Xuanwu and Hiro are live in a metaverse called The Real World, everything here is highly similar to the real world, people can only realize that they are actually wandering in metaverse when they are jumping to another metaverse through the jumping point. But is The Real World Metaverse real or “real”? Keep reading through the novel, you will find it out. (Btw, Our first 3000 pieces Genesis NFT collection is designed based on Our Metaverse Genesis.

About OurMetaverseDAO NFT: https://www.our-metaverse.xyz/.

I'm a mechanic, but nowadays there aren't many people doing this any more. Most people who are interested in mechanics flaunting themselves as mechanical designers or mechanical architects, and the machines they design and build are perfect — uh, I mean not entirely, and there are still destructive settings in some war games. It's just that even if it's broken, they just need to replace it with a new one. After all, in the metaverse, this is just a string of hashes (Note: the hash id represents the unique identity of a digital asset, which can be calculated from the content of the asset, but cannot be reversed).

Of course, this is not the case for all metaverses, such as the The Real World metaverse. The Real World is my favorite metaverse, and I spend barely all pf my time in the The Real World, where I have a job as a mechanic repairman that doesn't exist in other metaverses.

Now an hour away from the colonies of the new planet Terminator of the The Real World, as a legal citizen with the first lander tickets of the Terminator, I am preparing to board the mother planet of the The Real World.

I unplugged the infusion set in my hand, today's nutrients were completely filled, glucose seemed to fill every cell in my body, and the hunger disappeared in an instant. I tidied up my habitat unit, threw the nutrient bottle through the garbage outlet, automated systems and industrious robots will then send it to the dump. I don't know how this garbage is handled behind the scenes, although there is a public announcement in the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) where I live, but I have never cared. Behind the entire habitat there is a complex automatic delivery system, and the nutrient solution we consume every day and the garbage generated are processed through this system. Although I know the approximate operation logic of this system, only the core members of the DAO are concerned about specific matters.

I took a larger bottle of nutrient solution from the side, reinserted the infusion, and set up the automatic care mode. The first test of the Terminator was in the adventure mode, the duration was two days and one night, during which I had to maintain good physical strength. I adjusted the panoramic wall of the habitat, and adjusted the pleasant sea view just now to an indoor scene, when the interior of a wooden house was my access point in the The Real World. Well, this adjustment is not necessary, but it feels more "real" to enter the The Real World in this way.

I reclined to the hyper chair which was similar to the one in the ancient movie The Matrix, but more reliable, with no terrible access hole at the back of my neck, but an access slot facing outward. There is no insertion like an octopus tentacle, just a access collar, and the access collar is connected by magnetic suction after the interface is put on. In addition, I will not be beaten to vomit blood in the metaverse, most of the feedback in metaverse is only a slight simulation of pain or no pain at all.

The admission program runs quickly, like a quick flash into a dream. After a brief loss of consciousness, I entered the The Real World, I took off the access collar, and at this time my flesh in the habitat was still wearing the access collar, I just removed it in the metaverse. Of course, there are also many people who enter the metaverse without a collar, and even some people's access place is mid-air in the parachute state - this is what the "Fortressverse does, which is full of war freaks and extremists. Patriarchal and feminists are playing a never-ending game of war, where chauvinists slaughter infinite alien monsters. In this way, let these extremists drunkenly dream of death in their world, tens of thousands of metaverses are enough for them to spend a lifetime, otherwise sooner or later there will be a WWIV(World War IV).

The inhabitants of the The Real World are more likely to live in the agricultural era thousands of years ago, and the citizens here like to enter the metaverse in this way, which makes us feel we are in a utopia world with real world environment. Most citizens of the The Real World are "realists," and making access place into places to live would make the metaverse feel more real, after all, the feeling of a large living person suddenly disappearing out of thin air is not "real."

I got up from my hyperchair, shook myself, and looked at my avatar. A body of refined muscles, close to six feet tall, I can easily control it. Because that's what I really look like, people in the The Real World like it, so we're actually quite a minority. Most people never exercise in their habitat, they are just out of shaped guys, but in the metaverse they will have a unique beauty and strong physique. Not only that, but in some other metaverses, you can see dinosaurs and ants talking, and even mating is possible.

The gate of the access place is authorized by signing a private key implanted in my hand, which is a string of 1024-bit passwords representing my keys and IDENTITY card in the metaverse. I opened the door, and Hiro was already waiting for me behind the door. He still wore his odd hat and gloves, and held the ancient samurai sword, and his slender avatar was decorated by his outfit like an ancient oriental samurai.

Hiro saw me come out and said exaggeratedly, "Why are you so draggy? Don't tell me that you forgot the time because of riding a bike. "

I smiled and said, "I'm on time, actually you are early, it's not quite like your style, it stands to reason that you and Alita should be in another metaverse and won’t  rush over until the last minute."

Hiro waved his hand and said, "Don't mention about it, Alita did not draw the whitelist of the Terminator, saying that she was extremely disappointed with the 'real world' and gambled to go to the 'Fortressverse' to play battle royale."

I didn't continue the talking, Alita and Hiro had been together for a month, the longest female companion with him. But who knows how long it will last? Alita is a fanatic of Azuki culture, originally immersed in the metaverse of various ancient East Asian cultures, but she does not know where she met Hiro, a "real" ancient samurai, so she suddenly became obsessed with the The Real World and became obsessed with Hiroshi.

Hiro wielded his samurai sword and hurried to board the ship. This knife was authorized by Stephenson, the author of the science fiction novel SnowCrash in the last century, and is a digital version of the samurai sword of the protagonist of the novel, "Hiro", with a global limit of 10,000 copies. This thing is surprisingly precious, and Hiroshi treats him as a treasure. It is said that this thing was given to him by an old man when he was raising the dean, and the previous generation still had parents, and most of them had some heirlooms in their hands. Now people like to go to the nursing home when they are old, and give their NFT (non-fungible tokens, which can be used to anchor an asset) to their favourite child. Either some of them will destroy the private key and let the NFTs be buried together, and I don't know how many precious CryptoPunks and BAYCs will never be found again.

We drove an electric car to the community's Hyperrail station, which was built five years ago to provide intra-planetary transportation services for the community. There are about a few thousand people in the community at the moment, and Hiro and I have lived here for several years, and we love the sparse villas here, enjoying the wind and air in the countryside. I don't like the bustling and pompous neighborhoods, full of showgirls with expensive avatars like CryptoPunk or BAYCs, and many mfers fanatics. The ancient NFTs from the last century are now expensive antiques, and all we can show off is the world's limited edition of 10,000 katana. There are very few neighborhoods like that in the "real world," and most of them are neighborhoods like ours.

Through the capsule car of the Hypertetsu station, we will ferry to the central launch site at a speed of 3,000 kilometers per hour. The entire super-iron system of the "real-world" home planet is artificially built, not through batch replication like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, nor is it automatically generated by AI. Instead, we needed to build brick by manipulating robots and various heavy machinery, and both Hiro and I were involved in this project. Hiro was involved in the construction of the railway subgrade, and I was involved in the construction of the power system.

After that project was done, I became a mechanic repairman, responsible for maintaining the The Real World starship. What I like about working for the The Real World is its realism, and you get the feeling that if the ship maintenance is not done well, the ship will really explode. The only thing I don't like is that all "real-world" jobs need to go into robot avatars. The robot is very delicately designed, the head is very small, and the torso is also very slender and flexible in addition to the toolbox on the chest, but it still does not have its own native avatar to control. According to the official version, the robot is more powerful, and a lot of expansion equipment is implanted, which is more convenient. That's true, but they can also directly transform people into Hercules and Cyborgs as they did in the Fortress Universe. After all, this is the metaverse, and there is nothing that cannot be done. But I also understand the approach of the Star Ring DAO, they have their principles, "real" is their pursuit, and transforming people under the setting of The Real World does not exist. It's just that this kind of attachment is a bit excessive, and it becomes stubborn.

Coming out of the central launch site super-rail station is a square, the square is very large, called Civic Square. The square is a circle with an estimated diameter of two or three kilometers. Anywhere in the square you can see the space elevator straight into the sky, one end of the elevator is in the center of the square, and the other end is in the The Real World parent star synchronization orbit 20,000 kilometers away. The nanomaterials that construct the space elevator reflect a bright black light under the sun's illumination, like a large steel chain left by Pangu when it opened up the world. Sometimes you get the feeling that the sun is dragging the planet around it through this chain.

Hiro tied the passing strap of the ticket to the samurai sword and swung it in a high profile. Those who did not grab tickets to watch the launch of the Terminator silently gave way to a road and cast envious glances. Hiro enjoyed the feeling and hummed a little tune inside.

"It's a good knife."

"It's the limited edition of SnowCrash"

"He also has a ticket, I'm really envious."

Hearing the praise next to him, Hiro raised his head higher. I said, "You're so arrogant, if you had been in the last century, you would have had your ticket robbed."

Hiro still had a disdainful face: "You just watched too many ancient movies, always mentioned the things of the last century, now it is different, it is the era of digitalization, the era of the metaverse!" The ownership of this ticket is on-chain and certified, no one can take it without my private key.

When it was time to board the ship, I followed Hiro through the crowd to the entrance of the space elevator. The anticipation of the Terminator is what really excited Hiroshi and I. At most, the crowds around can only see the halo of the spacecraft's jump engine in space, but we can be the first citizens to see the new world. If nothing else, we can also get a new POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol), especially Hiro can show off.

When it comes to the jump engine, this thing is the only special thing about the The Real World, and this faster-than-light engine is the typical science fiction fantasy. However, the Star Ring DAO estimates that there is no other choice, the The Real World now has a total of 6 planets, the distance is several light years, without this thing, the shuttle between the planets has no theoretical support. The Star Ring DAO tried to make it seem less unreasonable in this matter, almost exhausting the explanation in science fiction, but for people with "real obsessive-compulsive disorder", it can only be tolerated.

In addition to the jump engine, the The Real World is an infinitely realistic world, where you can't forge a sword for no reason, you need to mine, to smelt iron, to make a model of the sword. Interesting, right? But citizens of other worlds don't think so, preferring pompous worlds where the planet's north pole to the south pole is only through a portal, or through a passage across the planet—it's nothing more than the unrealistic fantasy of a science fiction writer named Liu more than a hundred years ago in a novel called "Cannon of the Earth." But that's the way the world is, and everyone loves science fiction, and they like the kind of pompous science fiction buildings that are full of visual impact. In those metaverses, Newton probably wanted to get up from inside Westminster Abbey.

After checking in the tickets, we boarded the space elevator and looked out of the space elevator to the square, and the crowd became smaller and smaller in our line of sight. Looking at the number of people, it feels like the most people in the history of this square, and it may be that there are many citizens of other universes coming this time. There are also many people who like the The Real World, but compared with the "fortress universe", "third life", and "inhabited world", there are many fewer people. But I love the real world, where I'm going to ride to a friend's house, where we make pizza together, and the old Chinese delicacy of yellow stewed chicken. We're really going to kill chickens, which is too violent for most people right now. They prefer to play a war game that doesn't bleed and doesn't break an arm or a leg, and even the war freaks are just hiding in the steel monsters.

The Terminator is a newly set planet of the The Real World, which is called the Terminator because the star in the star system it is in is a white dwarf, and this white dwarf star should have been a star similar to the sun, but at this time its hydrogen fuel has burned out, because the remaining mass is too small to continue to fuse, so it has become a helium white dwarf. Although the white dwarf is more than half the mass of the Sun, because the planet terminator is also relatively small in mass and close to the white dwarf, it still leads to tidal locking. This makes the side of the Terminator always facing the stars, the sunny side that is forever scorched by the hot sun. The other side is always carrying the stars, and every moment you can see the dark side of the icy starry sky. Only the terminator of the planet at the junction of the yang and yin sides are suitable for survival. In fact, such a setting is not new, there is a similar setting in the metaverse of the "Dyson Ball Universe", but the Star Ring DAO has repeatedly guaranteed that the details of this planet will exceed everyone's imagination, and its rotating chairman has even set a bet through a smart contract (a program that cannot be tampered with on the blockchain), and if the score is less than 9 points, he will airdrop the 10 bitcoins locked in the contract to real-world citizens. This is a lot of wealth, so it satisfies everyone's appetite.

"Real world" admission tickets are not cheap, they require 10 bits, which equals to 0.00001 bitcoins, which is almost the entire income of one year of a ordinary citizen. This is one of the reasons why the The Real World didn't sell well before. In fact, if the real world were cheaper and attract more people to Star Ring DAO, they could make more money, but it seems that their boss does not care about income, and Star-Ring gives his employees a high salary - 100 bits a year. So for me, the The Real World admission ticket is not expensive, after all, I am repairing the spaceship for the Star-Ring, which is not a job that many people can do. There are rumors that the owner of the Star-Ring is the famous Satoshi Nakamoto, but I don't believe this, Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin address has not been touched since The Third World War more than fifty years ago, and according to the age calculation, I think Satoshi Nakamoto has already passed away. For Satoshi Nakamoto, I prefer to believe that he is an organization, but it has died out in the cruel years of the war.

The space elevator carries us up to low Earth orbit, and a beautiful arc can be seen through the porthole at a height of tens of thousands of meters, which is the outline of the The Real World mother planet. It is a green planet, dotted with several blue seas on the green land, like an emerald set in the black background of the universe.

The time left for us to admire the mother planet was not long, and soon we entered the Terminator faster-than-light spacecraft through the connection ship, and the spacecraft's faster-than-light flight was very short, and I felt that it was more reasonable to use worm-hole theory to explain. Almost instantaneously, the ship's porthole was filled with a huge white star. The white dwarf will continue its life for nearly ten billion years until the star's residual fusion fuel is depleted until it becomes a black dwarf.

I looked out the porthole on the other side, and a maroon planet appeared in sight. It was the Terminator planet, and the spacecraft activated the gravitational field after a brief adjustment of attitude, and I greedily admired the planet through the huge glass window of the viewing platform. Unlike the wide terminator habitable zones in the Dyson Sphere Universe, the habitable zones here look narrow. At the junction of the dark and reddish-brown hemispheres there is a small circle of green rings, like a thin hairband for the planet.

There are no space elevators on the Terminator, and it is said that the The Real World is not intended to be built, because the Star Ring DAO has no intention of developing this place into a residential area. Come to think of it, too, the livable zone here is too narrow. And even if it is to be developed, according to the obsessive-compulsive construction method of the Star Ring DAO, it is estimated that it will take several years.

At a distance of tens of thousands of kilometers, you can only see the outline of the land, but what you are really looking forward to is the land adventure to the new world! "Watch me cut off the necks of monsters on this planet!" Hiro wielded his samurai sword, showing off his clumsy sword skills, screaming with excitement.

"Maybe this planet is full of soft creatures that will split themselves, and the more they cut, the more they cut!"

Hiro nodded thoughtfully, changed a front-stabbing move and shouted, "Then I will pierce its heart!"

I couldn't help but tease, “But you have to know where his heart is first."

I have seen many alien creatures in the metaverse. They often copy the Cambrian period of the earth half a billion years ago, copying the ancient earth creatures that appeared in the explosion of life, and the biological pads that still existed on the earth's seabed a hundred years ago, that is, the strange population of microorganisms with neural networks, and the strange flowers that grow in the polar regions, and the strange insects that grow like elephant noses, are just creatures that still exist on the earth, or have existed.

Hopefully, the The Real World doesn't let us down.

Hiro and I left the Terminator spacecraft in a nuclear-powered two-seat landing craft, and this is the official start of the expedition! Compared to the landing craft of the Dyson Sphere Universe, the The Real World landing craft follows the principles of real physics. We need to fasten our seat belts to avoid being thrown out of the seat by acceleration. Landing also requires consideration of true gravity, air density, oxygen content, etc. There are many things to pay attention to, fortunately, the landing craft has an intelligent control system, otherwise it is estimated that we will be equipped with a professional astronaut of the last century, and perhaps a mathematician and physicist, just like in the old movie, everyone will unite to solve the space crisis smoothly. Although artificial intelligence ultimately failed to surpass the human brain, in this designated field, artificial intelligence has replaced humans hundreds of years ago.

We first lowered to a suborbital orbit of about 50 kilometers above the surface, and now that the planet has taken up most of our field of vision, we can see the planetary ground more clearly. The Terminator planets are about the size of Mercury in the solar system, and smaller than Mars. Much smaller than the The Real World home planet. The The Real World parent star is based on the blueprint of venus in the solar system, so the gravity on the mother planet is actually not much different from that of the earth, but the gravity on Terminator is relatively low, almost only 1/3 of the earth. Of course, these are all told by the spacecraft, warning us to pay attention to controlling the balance of the body when landing. This is the The Real World, exactly!

We looked at the Terminator in suborbital orbit, and the landing craft was flying around the planet's terminator , which was now over the equator. Although the equator is more illuminated by white dwarfs than at higher latitudes, because it is close to terminator, we estimate that the surface temperature below will not be particularly high, and we can still see vegetation. Looking at the positive side of the planet, you will find that the surface has turned reddish brown, which is the place where the high temperature of the white dwarf is scorched, although the light radiation of the white dwarf is not large, but because the Terminator planet is very close to it, the temperature of the nearest place to the star in the middle is estimated to be similar to that of Venus in the solar system.

The trajectory we fly is not completely on the Terminator, but is biased towards the sun. Looking in the direction of the dark side, you will find thick clouds stretching out from the dark side, and occasionally you can see the lightning bolts erupting in the blackness of the dark side. The hot air from the sunny side meets the cold air of the dark side at the Terminator, forming this thick cloud layer, and the closer to the equator and the dark side the cloud layer, the thicker it is, and the closer to the sunny side and the bipolar cloud, the thinner it is. From thick to thin, from black to white, clouds have created a long picture on the planet's morning and evening lines, as if evolving from an ancient Oriental ink landscape painting to a Western oil painting.

We continued to sail north, the clouds becoming a little thinner, but it should have been raining heavily, and we saw a large expanse of forest appearing below. The deep forest near the morning and evening line is the densest, showing a dark green color. But at this height, we still don't see the details.

"Look, ocean!" Hiro pointed to the blue waters that began to appear in the distance. We continued to get closer and found that it was a very large lake. Estimated to be a little larger than the Mediterranean, I've seen maps of Earth in the last century, when the Mediterranean hadn't dried up yet.

The lake is probably around 30 degrees north latitude on the planet, and we decided to continue to lower the altitude closer. The lake has a strange comb shape, the teeth of the comb are of different lengths, somewhat curved, and the tip of the teeth is facing the sun side of the planet. The comb extends that side all the way to where the shady side can't see, as if there is some abundant water source there. The lake is not a single blue, it is already dark green near the yin side, and the color closest to the yang side like a comb tooth is crystal sky blue, so that it looks like a drop of melted glass falling down with transparent glass water.

We took a full picture of the lake and named it "Beauty Sea". Actually, I wanted to name it "Comb Lake", but Hiro insisted on his name, saying that it was more like Alita's hair. Well, why didn't he just name it "Alita Sea"? That way maybe Alita would have more of a crush on him. But I can only be by him, who let him find out first?

We immediately submitted a naming application, no one else preemptively, the naming rights of this lake belonged to us, and it was officially named "Beauty Sea".

"Go! Head to the Sea of Beauty! Hiro shouted excitedly.

We continued to approach, and the spaceship flew along the longest hair of the Sea of Beauty toward the shade. Now that the spacecraft is only a hundred meters above the surface of the water, we have seen more details and understood why such a strange lake has been formed - because the temperature on the side close to the yang side is relatively high, so many places have dried up, and only the terrain of the gully can retain abundant moisture, but the closer to the yang surface, the higher the temperature, so the water flow will become narrower and narrower.

"It's so funny, other planets are water flowing from rivers to sea, and here water flows from the sea to rivers!" I couldn't help but sigh.

"Look! There's something on the surface of the water! Hiro said, pointing to a moving dot below.

We continued to move down, sensing the flow of water below, the moving dots going down the river. As we continued to approach, we found that it was not one point, but many points together.

"Must be a species of this planet!" Hiro said.

I nodded, "It's like a fish, go down and look at it, it looks like we can name a species."

This fish is very slender, the color of the back is very special, it is light blue, and it is not easy to be detected in the water. The fish is very large, a little larger than the average fish on Earth, about a meter long. They followed the current downwards, and through the zoomed-in view of the landing craft we saw that they all had a large mouth, their bodies motionless, only the small tail fins gently swaying to maintain their balance, it looked like plankton eating water, we wondered where the fish would end up swimming? Because the end of the river is not the sea, but the dry desert. So we followed, fortunately not far from the end, it shouldn't be too long.

The river continues to fork, and schools of fish seem to be deliberately choosing some of its tributaries. After about half an hour, we reached the end of a certain tributary. This is a special tributary, and at the end of the tributary is a small waterfall with a drop of about ten meters. There is almost no standing water under the waterfall, because the water flow here is already very small, and the high temperature makes it easier for the water here to dry up. Judging from the data measured by the spacecraft, the external temperature here has reached more than fifty degrees, which is no longer a habitable environment for human beings.

What about these schools of fish? Don't they know they're going to have a cliff of death? Or will they travel back on the cliffs?

As the fish got closer to the cliff, Hiroshi and I stared nervously at the fish, even with an urge to save them.

Five or six meters from the cliff, the school of fish moved, and I guess they must have found the death trap in front of them and were preparing to swim back. But soon I realized I was wrong, the fish were shaking their bodies, speeding forward, they were accelerating towards the cliff!

Then we saw a scene of surprise. The fish rushed forward from the waterfall with the help of the current and their own acceleration. Shaking his body wildly in the air, as if he were throwing the water dry. Because gravity is relatively small, they can stay in the air for a longer time. The moisture seemed to dry up quickly in the jitter and heat, and then two pairs of wings spread out from the sides of their bodies, the wings had no feathers, and the huge wings were estimated to be two meters long when they were spread, which reminded me of the Earth pterosaurs that were extinct tens of millions of years ago. Dozens of fish turned into dragons in the air, U-turned not far away, soaring over this low-gravity planet and flying upstream of the river.

Flying faster than swimming, the fish, transformed into a dragon, soon swam to the very upper reaches of the river, where it meets the lake, and began to land. They had no feet, so they had to land on the water, gliding some distance on the water and then folding their wings and diving into the water again. We didn't continue to follow them, and there were more interesting things to discover. Maybe they'll continue the cycle, maybe one day they'll fly to the shadows.

"I'll leave the name to you this time!" Hiro said generously.

"Water Dragons", I immediately named, when I just saw them landing I decided to call them that.

Over the next day, we landed on the ground and explored a forest full of giant sunflower trees. Because the gravitational pull of the planets is too small, the trees are hundreds of meters high, and because of the light, they all grow to one side. We also delve deep into the dark mountains of the overworld, where abundant rain and glaciers continue to nourish the Beauty Sea. There are also fish that constantly migrate ovulation across the morning and evening lines, insects that fly with hot and cold air currents, and more importantly, the design of their interdependent ecosystems is amazing. And every inch of the mountains and rivers seems so real, there is no trace of random generation by the algorithm. I'm afraid that no map of the world, except for the fully simulated 21st-century Earth in Life Tsering, can reach this level of design. Really curious about who was leading the design, Star Ring DAO was tight-lipped about it. No wonder, presumably, this is their core trade secret.

The expedition was enjoyable and smooth. Hiroshi and I had a lot of fun, both gave a full score of 10, and it seems that the 10 bitcoins of the star ring are saved. In addition, we also gained 28 naming rights, as well as a POAP of the "Terminator Pioneer", and Hiroshi also wore it to several universes to show off.

The first opening of the Terminator received high praise, and the Star Ring DAO immediately began to plan to establish a vacation site, after all, the automatic care mode cannot be used frequently, otherwise it will cause damage to the human body. According to the The Real World setting, only after having a vacation point can you switch out of the metaverse by "falling asleep" on the "morning and dusk line". Hiroshi participated in the construction of the resort site, on the one hand, to earn a little bit of the back vacation bits, on the other hand, he was very enthusiastic about the construction of things.

It's not just me and Hiroshi, almost half of the The Real World players are peripheral members of Star Ring DAO, which was founded after the nuclear war of World War III, and is said to have been founded by a real-life version of Iron Man in the last century, but he went bankrupt in his Mars colonization plan, and it happened to be a war, and the company was finally acquired by a big chaebol in the East. There are rumors that the Chinese government at that time actually took the lead, with the purpose of seizing the resources of Mars, and some said that the capitalists of the Western camp were manipulating through a backdoor. In that history of nation-states, political secrets in the great power game are interesting topics that have remained unchanged for millennia.

Again, I have to earn bits. My job is more difficult than building.

As a peripheral member of The Ring, I work almost two days a week, but I still love it. I need to check that the ship's various equipment is connected properly and that there is no damage. Know that in the The Real World, spacecraft parts will really be worn. I really don't know what kind of existence the quantum server of the star ring is, and the loss simulation is extremely realistic. It is said that they really built things like Dyson balls to power quantum servers, anyway, I don't believe it, it is better to build Dyson balls than to go to Jupiter to dig up hydrogen fuel.

I followed the usual process and entered the The Real World again, only this time in ARinMetaverse mode, which also contains elements of augmented reality. In the last century, AR helped people build cars and airplanes in the real world, and now we use AR to assist in the metaverse.

My place of work looks like a studio from the last century, a huge factory building with hundreds of meters of side and a green screen surrounded by walls. It's just that the green screen is built by AR, and the boundaries of the workspace are virtually demarcated. I controlled the maintenance robot avatar into the factory building and began to overhaul the spaceship in front of me.

The spacecraft in front of us is exactly the same elliptical shape as the "Morning and Dusk Line" landing craft, and it may be one of the spacecraft that landed at that time. I checked every interface of the spacecraft, from the engine to the cockpit, with the assistance of AR. I have to do the inspections independently, and of course, The Star Ring will let other mechanic repairmen do the same checks to make sure that different people get the same conclusions. I think the Star Ring DAO gang must be extreme realists, but I also thank them for letting me have this job, knowing how difficult it is to find a job that can earn money in the metaverse, and those who do not want to work for the Star Ring DAO can only eat welfare every day, spend time in tens of thousands of metaversms, until they die in various physical diseases caused by obesity.

The front inspection of key parts such as the engine and cabin containment system went smoothly until I found a small anomaly when I checked one of the landing craft's seats. In fact, it is not abnormal, that is, there is a hairpin under the gap of a seat, which looks like a lady's leftover item. Probably left by the people who had taken the landing craft before, which could be automatically identified by the program, I had to sigh again that the pursuit of the Star Ring DAO gang really brought realism to the extreme.

I laboriously picked up the hairpin from the gap with a robotic hand, which was a small pink hairpin with the decoration of a small squirrel, and the little squirrel held a pine cone, so cute that it was estimated to be a little girl's.

As I was thinking, there was a rush of footsteps behind me. This is strange, I have never encountered it when repairing, according to the program workspace should now only be able to open my private key.

I hurriedly got up and turned my head to look, just in time to see a young girl appear at the entrance of the cabin. The girl looked about seventeen or eighteen years old, and her smooth hair was tied into two braids behind her back. She looked panicked, as if she were looking at the hairpin in my hand. That's right, it should be hers. This girl is different from all the girls I've ever seen, and there's a special feeling in her — a real feeling. It could be because of her panicked expression, or maybe it was because of that rare hairstyle. There are very few things in the world that can be panicked now, and the hairstyles of young girls are often out of the blue. No one panics, because the lost card can always be retrieved, the card is also an NFT, and the ownership of all NFTs has been recorded and deposited through the blockchain. By the way, she looks like a girl from an ancient movie. I've seen some movies of that era, not 3D, and I can't go into the picture, but can only watch on a screen at the angle given by the director.

I handed the card over and tried to speak, but remembered that I was just a maintenance robot. I turned on the robot's speaker and said to the girl in the electrical voice of the repair robot, "Is it your hairpin?" Here you go.

I handed the hairpin over, and the girl took it away with a sigh and turned her head and ran away. After a while I remembered to get up and go out to see the direction in which the girl's footsteps had left, and I saw an incredible scene. The girl went straight through the green curtain as if it didn't exist for her.

I walked in the direction the girl had left, found a little reflection not far in front of me, walked in and saw that it was a pine cone on the hairpin, which the girl had accidentally dropped. I originally wanted to pick it up, but when the inspection time came, I stopped caring and could only leave with doubts. As for the pine cone decoration, I thought that maybe in a moment the girl would come and take it herself.

I did not report this matter, and the report may lead to the conclusion that my private key is not well kept, so I decided to investigate and investigate myself first. Did someone tamper with the program? But this is not possible. All the programs are running on the blockchain, the code is open source. I went out of my way to review the relevant code and found no abnormalities.

The landing craft dropped by the girl's hair card was a luxury landing craft, and when I went into the overhaul again, I found that the landing craft was no longer there. The function of the luxury landing craft is actually similar to that of Hiroshi and I riding on the "morning and dusk line", but the interior is more luxurious and the space is larger.

I tried to look for the girl, but I didn't find any trace of the girl. If people see content in the metaverse, they may be able to find more clues in real time, but that would violate the Metascopic Privacy Protection Convention. Especially in the The Real World, you can't even take a snapshot, you have to build a camera, which is a thing that was invented hundreds of years ago.

In the end, this matter was not resolved, and I went to participate with Hiroshi in the construction of the vacation point on the "Morning and Dusk Line". Soon, the "morning and evening line" was open to the public. Hiroshi and I made an appointment to go with me again, and this time he took Alita with him. It's funny, they're still together.

"I didn't expect you to still be together." If this continues, it will be almost possible to apply for the highest record in the community.

Alita muttered dismissively, "Why can't we be together?" We're also planning to get married.

marry? Make no mistake, the system of the last century is now resurgent?

I looked at Hiroshi, who nodded awkwardly and said, "Yes, the 'real world' is now popular." I also studied that in ancient times, people made weddings really complicated, and there were all kinds of strange ceremonies.

Well, I had to wave my hand. Sure enough, no universe can escape the characteristics of that universe deeper and deeper, and different worlds are becoming more and more divided, and the "Fortress Universe" will eventually become a holy place for war maniacs, and no peace lovers will be tolerated. The The Real World is expected to end up full of realists, and maybe one day we will have to cultivate the land here with buffalo and transport it by horse.

After landing on the "Morning and Dusk Line", I said goodbye to Hiroshi and Alita, on the one hand, to leave them a little space - there are not a few people who want to experience a new sexual experience on the tall sunny wood of the "Morning and Dusk Line". On the other hand, I want to go around and see if I can find some clues to the girl who issued the card.

I was walking around the holiday spot, which was now fully booked. The resort is built on a peninsula in the Sea of Beauties, densely covered with forests made of sunny wood, but a landing site has been opened in the center for landing craft to land. I walked all the way to the landing site and saw no useful clues on the way.

The landing site is an alloy-paved ground with yellow stripes bearing the Star Ring DAO logo. The stripe felt familiar to me, as if I had seen it somewhere. I circled around the landing site and suddenly noticed a little reflection in the grass next to me, a small reflective pine cone decoration. Yes, I didn't look closely at the last time I overhauled the landing craft, but I'm sure that's the decoration on the girl's hair card, and I finally understand why it feels familiar under my feet, because that's the ground when I repair the landing craft. This was the maintenance plant at that time, but it was surrounded by a green screen at that time.

An incredible idea popped into my head, the The Real World is full of so many weird settings, what is the real purpose of a metaverse that simulates reality so realistically? Is it really just a realist pursuit?

A few days later I received another inspection mission, and I carefully examined the pattern printed on the landing site. Indeed, exactly the same as on the "morning and dusk line", I wrote down some defects in the details of the lines, like fingerprints, which are enough to show that this is the landing point of the planet "morning and dusk line". Why? Is it for the truth? Why did you choose to do an inspection at the location where the spacecraft docked? Instead of uploading a model of the ship to a more appropriate virtual space? Know that in the metaverse, all this is data.

Another thing that made me wonder even more was that the last time I left a mark in a hidden location for verification, but when I tried to find it, I didn't find that mark again, if it was for the sake of truth, the workspace was set at the landing point, then the mark I left should also be kept.

I looked at the green screen and tried to get out of where the girl had left before. But as in all other locations, whenever it was about to approach the green screen, the robot would sound an alarm and could no longer control it to move forward.

What's outside the green screen? Maybe it's the forest on the peninsula of the morning and evening vacation, maybe it's the void, the infinite abyss of consciousness stagnation. But maybe it's the truth, it's the truth, it's a truth that I can't help but don't dare to think about.

The thirst and curiosity for the truth completely overshadowed reason, and as a mechanic repairman, the false green curtain could not stop me. There is an identification chip on the robot's left wrist, through which the green screen identifies the positioning. The robot arm had a cutting device on it, and I cut a round hole in my left wrist with a diameter of three centimeters. The chips and wires in the arm are exposed, like the blood vessels and muscles of the robot, and I now look like an ancient doctor who gave the robot a simple surgical operation.

The identification chip was removed by me, and the robot was still functioning normally, which seemed no big deal. I'm going to walk out now, and there may be nothing outside the green curtain, most likely I'll walk around the deep forest full of sunny trees and walk back again.

Unrulyness brings a sense of guilt, which makes me a little nervous. I took a deep breath, though the robot wasn't breathing, it was to try to smooth out my fast-beating heart. I controlled the maintenance robot to slowly approach the green screen, and my arm smoothly extended from the green screen. Then there was the body, and when the robot's eyes went out, I saw the forest in my imagination, which was the characteristic sunning wood on the "morning and dusk line".

It didn't seem like much, I muttered, and then followed the gentle sound of the waves to continue towards the Beauty Sea. Not long after I left, there was a laugh that made my heart palpitate, it was the cheerful frolicking sound of a young girl in the distance. Although she didn't speak when I saw the hairpin girl, I seemed to feel that this was her voice.

Coming out of the forest, I saw a beach washed by the Sea of Beauty, all pure white sand. White dwarfs hanging in the same position forever on the horizon in the distance shine here. White light shines on the white sand beach, the breeze blows through the treetops of the sunny wood, and the maintenance robot seems to be able to smell the warm sea breeze, which is simply the perfect holiday destination.

I looked into the distance, and there were three people. Not a robot, but a humanoid avatar.

The voice came from a young girl, and I recognized her at a glance, that is, the hairpin girl. There was also a man and a woman, older. The girl jumped under the low gravity of the planet, as if playing some game. I zoomed in using the repair robot's zoom glasses, and I saw the girl's hair fluttering in the breeze and saw the cheerful smiles of the three of them. It reminds me of ancient movies — they look like a family. Very real, very real. Their smiles were the most real I'd ever seen, just as real as the panicked look of a young girl I'd seen last time.

Now the people of the metaverse may still be happy, but there is no sadness, no panic, no pain. I was suddenly a little jealous, jealous of their feelings. I kept going forward and I wanted to ask them why they were so happy.

They were also aware of my presence, and the expression was at first surprised, then changed. The older man began to get a little angry, shouting something. The older woman became a little frightened, and she hugged the girl tightly. The girl's expression is more complicated, is it worried? Is it panic? It's a look I've never seen before.

Yes, that's right, these are the expressions, the expressions that only existed in ancient movies. I continued to approach and said in the mechanical voice of the repair robot, "Hello, I have a question I want to ask you." I don't understand all this and I need an answer. ”

When I was ten meters away from the girl, the helper called by the man came. They have weapons in their hands, much like the laser guns in fortress universe.

"Don't get any closer, or we're going to shoot."

I ignored them and kept moving forward, I wanted to see them up close, I even wanted to touch them.

A flash of light broke my left arm. Then there's the right arm.

I move on.

"I just want to know the truth."

Next up is my left leg.

I continued to pedal forward with my right leg.

"Issuing cards, I gave you your card, do you remember?"

"Don't, Dad!" The girl shouted.

But it was too late, and my right leg was gone.

I was like a broken marionette rolling to the ground.

Das? This is a term that only existed in the last century. Is a man a teenage girl's father? One of the roles of the "family" unit created in ancient times to maintain social stability.

"Dad, I know him, he's a spaceship repairman."

"No, Nana. It's just a robot, a broken robot. You go back, here I will send him to repair. ”

Then, my skull cover was pried open, presumably a button inside was pressed. Almost instantly, my consciousness returned to the habitat's body. In the real world, I was still lying on the access chair, but the world I was in was more like the real world than the habitat.

I closed the entire view of the habitat, and the cold walls became as dark as the eyes of a giant beast. A sense of loneliness that had never been felt before instantly soaked all over his body, as if he had fallen into a bottomless ice cave in the "ice universe". I circled around the habitat unit I was in, and the only thing in the ten square meters of space was a few small fish and fitness equipment that I had. In my memory, it seems that I have never been out of here since I came.

I sat back in my access chair and put on my access collar.

My real friends in this world are only Hiro, we met when we were in the nursing home, have similar interests, and should still belong to the same habitat DAO. But we haven't actually seen each other since we came out of the custody, but it doesn't matter, we see each other almost every day in the metaverse.

I'm going to tell Hiroshi that the "morning and evening line" is real! The spaceship is real! Beauty Lake and the "Flying Dragon on the Water" exist in the real world, in the tens of millions of stars in the sky! And someone is hiding this from us! They enjoy the real wind! The real sea! And real joy and sadness! And we waste our lives in this endless nothingness!

However, nothing happened when the neck cover and the interface on the back of my neck were engaged. I did not appear in the The Real World entry point, nor did I appear in any other metaverse. I switched a universe, and it still is. "Fortress World", "Dyson Ball Universe", "Third Life", etc. I can't access.

I frantically switched universes, trying the kind of small universes I'd never been in, the "ETO Community," "PeopleDAO," "Dune World," "Cat Star," and so on, and all the universes rejected my admission. I opened the blockchain browser and tried to verify my identity. From the address that represents my identity all the way up from the bottommost network, I found my signed identity information on the second-layer network, and found asset information on the third-layer network, but all the information retained only a string of hashes, and the corresponding original information has been destroyed. At the top of the application-layer network, I found a logout history signed by my private key, and I had nothing but a bunch of hashes—everything I had was written off, and I disappeared from the world.

I tried to open the door of the habitat unit, and maybe I could get help through the citizen of the next unit, even though I had never seen him or her. But, my biggest fear happened – the door wouldn't open. The private key implanted in the arm has become invalid. The habitat is like a grave at the moment, and I am now a living dead.

I am reminded of the proverb: "There is no private key, there is nothing." Lose your private key, lose everything. At this moment, I understand the second half of the sentence. I can't reach out to friends, I can't prove my identity, I can't even get the nutrient solution, I'm now a non-existent person, a person abandoned by the world, a person who will be trapped here.

I shouted loudly, but I knew no one would say yes. I slammed the alloy door with my fitness barbell, which did nothing but bring a little dent. I dismantled the spinning bike and used the steel pipe of the bike frame to pry the door. Until the steel pipe was bent, the alloy door remained unmoving. Until finally I pried open the vent, fortunately I wasn't as fat as the people in the "Habitat World" metaverse, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get in.

I climbed down the ventilation duct and quickly realized that it didn't work. The vent is only the section of the outlet that is relatively wide, and it is very narrow at the back. I had to stop after crawling for about ten meters. I continued to look for vents that led to other habitat units, perhaps to Hiro, but the pipes I climbed over didn't have any forks. Vents should be smaller here and then merged with vents in other habitats. I turned to continue crawling back, and I should have continued to try to pry open the door.

At this time, the fire in front of us flashed, and a crisp explosion sounded.

Explosion, there is a bomb in the room? It is more likely to be transmitted through a conveyor belt, just like the transmission of nutrient solution. They're going to kill me!" Kill people and kill people! This kind of bridge only happened to me in ancient movies.

Calm, calm. Think about what Neo would do in The Matrix? - To put it bluntly, he is in the virtual world, I am now in reality. Think of Stallone, or Jackie Chan. Is it right that I should now run away and then find out the truth and then ask for help to bring down the villain? Fuck it! I'm just fucking a mechanic.

But I still forced myself to calm down, at least I insisted on exercising and still running.

I slowly fumbled back, carefully observing the new condition of my habitat unit. I got two pieces of news, one good news and one bad news. The good news is that the door has been blown open, and the bad news is that there is a robot searching. The overall structure of this robot is similar to the maintenance robot I often control, but there is no maintenance kit on it. It seems that this robot is estimated to be controlled by someone behind it, and the complete artificial intelligence cannot reach this level. Humans have established the metacosm, but they have never broken through the human brain. If I'm not mistaken, maybe the robot is now controlled by a peripheral worker of the Star Ring DAO, who may think that he is just performing a virtual task, thinking that it is a simple task to destroy a target, but now finds that his target has disappeared.

The robot held a laser gun in his hand and walked around without thinking of the vent. Maybe he thought I had been blown to smithereens, and after a turn, the robot walked out of my habitat unit. I waited patiently for a while, slowly returning from the vent to the habitat unit, then fumbling out the door. There wasn't a single person outside, the explosion didn't wake up the people in the other habitats, and I think most of them were either wandering in the metaverse, sleeping, or even sleeping in the metaverse.

I slipped out of my habitat unit, where am I going next? I decided to go and find Hiro, maybe hiding from him. But I don't know where he lives. I'm going to go to the habitat DAO's management office, which should be available.

The habitat is built entirely underground, and the habitat I am in has about sixty floors. I am on the sixteenth basement floor and the management office is thirty-two underground. Each floor is surrounded by a large circle of rooms, about a hundred, and the middle is surrounded by rooms into an oval common area. In the middle of the area are four elevators facing each other and a staircase that surrounds the elevators.

I walked toward the elevator and soon found that the elevator could not be opened, and it seemed that I could no longer use all the devices that used my personal private key. I was about to go down the stairs when the elevator door opened. The robot killer just appeared in the elevator, although it is not 100% certain, but it is most likely him. It may be that the system informed him that the mission had failed, and he turned back again. The robot manipulator raised his hand and shot at me, probably he was also surprised by my appearance, and was not prepared, and the first laser was dodged by me.

In a panic, I ran up the stairs, and the robot killer chased after me. Fortunately, the robot was not as flexible as me, and with the cover of the stairs, I successfully ran up about five or six floors. I couldn't use the elevator and it was impossible to go down the stairs. It seems that I can only climb up, maybe I can climb out of the ground.

Although I am flexible, my physical strength is not as good as that of a robot. He was almost caught up while climbing to the third basement floor. He seemed to sense my exhaustion, and seemed to decide that I couldn't run away, and he didn't use the laser gun anymore, but just continued to chase after me.

I went to the top floor, the basement level, and at the end of the stairs was a door that should have opened upwards, and after that door I should have been able to reach the ground. I don't know what's out there, but I know I'm going to die if I stay here. However, I didn't even have a chance to go out, this door was exactly the same as the door of the habitat, and it couldn't be opened or kicked. The robot chased after me, and the laser gun was pointed at my head.

"You can still run, but it's interesting." The robot said in that mechanical voice, "Yes, this expression of fear is very real."

The player behind the robot enjoys the victor's pleasure and does not pull the trigger in a hurry.

The fear of death arose, and I wanted to ask for forgiveness, but I found that I could not speak, and I did not know whether it was because of dignity or fear. I looked at the muzzle of the gun and waited for the final moment of fate.

Suddenly, there was a gust of wind. The robot twitched, and then the head fell to the ground in response.

With the sound of the sword sheathing, a white and fat man appeared in front of me. The fat man's hat and gloves and the unique knife on his head betrayed him at once, although the contrast between reality and virtuality made me feel a little like laughing, but if it were not for the fact that I was still in a panic, I would definitely be handsome.

Hiroshi smiled and said coolly, "Brother, I've come to save you."

I slowly stood up, looked at his figure, and gave him a thumbs up: "Enough brother!"

Hiroshi scratched his head and said, "This is not a little too much to eat during this time, haha." When I was thin, it was exactly like the 'real world', and you know, I was physically certified."

I smiled, and indeed, although the difference in body shape was a little large, it did look similar.

I looked up at the fallen robot, and the player who controlled it behind me was probably the same as before, and was now back in his access chair. Then he looked at Hiroshi's knife again, exactly the same as in the metaverse, "This thing also has an offline perimeter?"

Hiroshi picked up the sword and stroked it like a baby: "This is my grandfather's legacy, real guy, cutting iron like mud!"

I believe this, I have just seen it. I always thought that Hiroshi was just playing in the metaverse, but I didn't realize that he was really a knifeman.

"How did you find it?"

"You suddenly disappear, not ordinary disappearances, everything about you is gone, leaving only some meaningless hash. I live on the third basement floor and wanted to go to the management office of the habitat DAO and go to you. But as soon as I went out, I saw you being chased up by a robot, so I followed up, you don't know, I just panicked."

Hiroshi is not pretending now, it seems that he is the same as me, just pretending to be calm.

I explained what had happened to Hiro, and Hiro nodded.

"I've also long felt that the 'real world' is a bit strange." Hiroshi said, "Next you stay with me, let's get the truth out."

It seemed like a good suggestion, but soon the footsteps from below woke me up, and I thought for a moment and said, "No, this is too dangerous." It's easy to spot and it will bother you. This floor is not a residential area, it should not be monitored, and you still have time to go back. I planned to go up to the ground and look outside."

Hiroshi said, "Go outside? I have heard people say that although the nuclear pollution outside has dissipated a lot, it is now ice and snow, and it is dozens of degrees below zero all year round."

I nodded, "I've also heard that there are legends that there are some neorealists out there who don't want to enter the metaverse, and I'm going to find them, and they should know something."

"How can you find them?" And you know, that's a legend.

"I don't know, maybe I'll keep going south. If the habitat DAO data is correct, then this is the northern hemisphere, and the south should be warmer and more habitable."

Hiro nodded, "I understand, I'll go back to the various metaversms to collect clues first, and I'll come here every three hours to pick you up for the next few days, and if I can't hold on on to the ground, I'll come back."

Hiroshi handed me the knife, "You keep this, maybe you can use it!"

I nodded and hugged Hiro to say goodbye, it was the first time I had really touched him, and the real feeling warmed me.

"Take care."

"Goodbye."

The door at the exit of the habitat could not be opened directly, and I used a robotic laser gun to melt the door lock directly. I also brought the laser gun with me, and maybe I can still use it.

Hiro also gave me his gloves and hat, which helped me a lot. Although the nano-smart suit can withstand the cold of minus one hundred degrees, the head and hands are not covered. He also handed me some artificial beef jerky, and this guy actually brought snacks with him, which is not cheap, no wonder he is so fat now.

I laboriously pushed open the door to the outside, and the cold wind rushed in instantly, and it was estimated that there were minus twenty or thirty degrees outside. I climbed out and built a simple flat roof outside the exit, supported by four pillars, presumably to prevent the door from being covered in wind and snow.

It was late afternoon, the sun could be faintly seen, the light was not dazzling, I adjusted to the light, and when I saw the scene clearly, a sense of unreality struck again. The image before one's eyes makes one feel as if time has frozen—the sun is like a imprisoned old man, hanging motionless in the western sky—and the setting sun is no longer a completely red round cake, but like a chain.

Dyson Ball!

The sun wrapped in Dyson's balls seems to be obscured by a fishing net, and the light is much weaker, perhaps this is the reason for the cold weather. They actually made dyson balls, but for what purpose? This makes me wonder what the world is real. Is this itself a metaverse? I didn't dare to think about it anymore, and I couldn't think of why.

The sun set to the west, and I easily found the south. I walked forward in the snow and wind, outside was a white plain, if it were not for the smart nanocoat I was wearing, then I would most likely freeze to death on this snowfield. Thinking about it this way, it seems good to be an ordinary person in the metaverse. What is the difference between real and unreal?

The cold wind blew a snowflake into my eyes, and this real cold was something I had never felt before. Yes, this is the real world. I can't stand cheating, I can't stand our enslavement in the virtual world, thousands of real universes waiting for us to explore, I absolutely can't waver, and now I have no way back.

I continued walking south, and there were many flat tops on the plain, and under each flat top was supposed to be an entrance to a habitat. There was no movement along the way except for the piercing sound of the wind. Everything seemed so calm, so calm that it was doubtful that the entrance to the habitat was completely unguarded.

But when I got to the edge of the habitat I knew why, I saw robot guards patrolling the snowy fields, all perimeter. Probably because people just think that someone might invade, but no one will escape. After all, who would want to escape from the warm metaverse to this cold reality?

There weren't many guards, and they were all robots. These are probably also controlled by the peripheral working members of the star ring. However, the work was estimated to be boring, and the guards seemed to be very loose. Just looking at the perimeter of the habitat, completely unaware that I was slowly approaching.

Each guard was about a hundred meters apart and appeared to be equipped with snowmobiles. I clenched the laser gun in my hand, estimating that I should be able to easily kill one of them from behind. But the others next to me were sure to catch up soon, and the chances of escaping were slim, so I had to hide behind a small snowdrift and wait for the right opportunity.

I ate some beef jerky in the snow to replenish some energy. This thing is really hard, Hiroshi is boy actually has this hobby, no wonder he is so fat now.

Finally, I waited for an opportunity, maybe it was too boring, maybe it was to be handed over. There were three guards gathered together, and within five hundred meters there were only three of them.

I approached slowly, first quickly killing one of them with a laser gun, then the other. I lost my hand when I played the third one and didn't hit it. But the man, apparently not in this situation, was still looking south, hiding behind the snowmobile with his back to me, and was shot in the head by my fourth laser. While I spend most of my time in the "real world," there are also war games in the "real world," and they're more real. I can't help but break out in a cold sweat when I think about it – maybe the carnage games that once happened in the The Real World actually happened in reality.

But at the moment I didn't have time to think about it, so I ran quickly and got on the snowmobile. I tried to turn the throttle and found that it would not start, and I immediately understood that private key permissions should be required. I cut off a piece of the machine guard arm with a katana and unlocked the electronic lock of the snowmobile through a private key implanted in the arm. The snowmobile started smoothly and I drove it south. I've played this stuff in the Ice Universe and it's pretty good. In fact, I'm curious why the guards here use such primitive means of transportation as snowmobiles, rather than high-tech such as hover planes. Maybe it's for cost, maybe they don't take the guards here seriously. But I was secretly glad that it was their arrogance that gave me the opportunity to escape.

The sound of the snowmobile alarmed the other guards nearby, and they immediately chased after it with the snowmobile. They looked excited, their robotic arms waving in circles in the air, and it seemed that the work had been boring before, and now it was time for them to hunt.

A total of four snowmobiles were chasing after them, perhaps in the distance. Lasers passed near me from time to time, but fortunately they were not equipped with auto-guided missiles, otherwise I would have been dried up long ago. The topography of the plains is not completely flat, and many hills and depressions can be seen in the light of the setting sun. I struggled to drive in the snow, hoping to get rid of them when it was dark.

As I leaped over a small snow hill, a depression suddenly appeared in front of me, and I hurriedly adjusted my direction and drove over a path in the middle, and the snowmobile tilted and crossed the depression in a thrilling way, and I was almost thrown out. The two guards who followed me were not so lucky, and they were thrown on their backs on the depression, and the mechanical body slammed heavily on the snow, splashing a piece of snow dust.

But this also caused my speed to slow down, and the guards who followed me on the left and right sides got closer to me, and they began to move closer to me. The laser stirred up patches of snow dust on the snow in front of me, causing my vision to suddenly blur. Although the snowmobile in my "Ice Universe" drives well, snow dust does not enter the eyes in the meta-universe game, and it is obviously more difficult to control the snowmobile in the real snow field. My eyes were so irritated by the snow dust that I couldn't help but cry, because I couldn't see the road ahead, and the snowmobile drove past a rock protruding from the ground. The high-speed snowmobile instantly threw me off and fell on the snow.

The cushioning of the snow saved my life, I just got a little bruise. Unlike the Ice Universe, this is the real world, and it's really possible to fall to your death. The machine guard approached quickly, and I flashed to a boulder in front of me and hit the approaching machine guard.

The energy of the laser gun is not infinite, and I have run out of power without a few shots. Two guards copied from two loaves of bread and kept approaching me. Their laser guns also seemed to have been depleted in the process, but it didn't matter to them because they were steel bodies, and they probably thought they could break my neck directly with a mechanical arm. But they don't know, I still have a knife.

I grabbed Hiroshi's katana, if only he were there. I don't have a good hand, this thing really doesn't have a laser gun to make.

I moved through the snow, trying to recall some basic tactics from the Fortress Universe, which I didn't play much. I can't face two enemies at the same time, unless I have three heads and six arms to beat them. The two guards were obviously aware of this, and they kept controlling the position to approach from either side of me.

When they were nearly ten meters away from me, I sped toward one of them, and I really wanted to thank the usual exercise, which made me run quite easily. Although the machine guard was a body of steel, after all, I had the length of a knife, and the knife stabbed deep into his heart. It seems that I have successfully completed the tactical action I imagined, and then I only need to face one more enemy. But I soon found out that I had made two mistakes. First, stabbing the robot's heart doesn't seem to make any sense, it's just a storage box, without any function. It is better to cut off the hands or feet. Second, the knife cannot be pulled out.

The stabbed machine guard stepped forward and grabbed my knife-wielding hands, and the machine guard on the other side quickly pounced on me. No matter how strong I was, I couldn't deal with the steel body, and just then two lasers passed through, and the heads of the two machine guards were burned through in an instant.

Two laser beams came from two men in white cotton coats, which felt more like in the metaverse, where almost everyone in the reality of our time wore nanocoats, which were thermostatic and lightweight. They had beards, their beards covered with frost, and a look in their eyes that I had never seen before. I guess they are the legendary Neorealists.

I stepped forward to thank you.

One of the taller men said, "You came out of it?" He pointed to the ground to the north.

I nodded and said, "I know some secrets, and they're going to kill me."

The man nodded and said, "Hello, my name is Wang Qiang, he is Peter."

Their names are full of ancient flavors, especially this one called Wang Qiang. But now there was no time to ask, I replied, "Hello, my name is Xuanwu."

"Nice name, young man, come with me, we'll get out of here first, and the cleaner's support will come at any time."

"Do the cleaners mean these machine guards?" I asked.

The man named Wang Qiang said, "It's too late to explain, we have to hurry up and pack up the booty before we leave."

I helped them collect the guards' guns and resources.

Wang Qiang said: "You also drive a snowmobile, which is an important resource for us."

"There are two more in the back." I remembered the two cars that had flipped over in the back.

Peter said, "I'll drive!"

Wang Qiang said: "It is too late, we must leave quickly, the enemy's air support should arrive soon, the drone is not easy to deal with."

Peter nodded reluctantly in agreement.

We drove three snowmobiles further south, the sun began to set and the distant mountains slowly became invisible. But the sky outside was clearer than I had imagined, and with the reflection of the snow, we headed for the mountains in the distance under the stars and a thin crescent moon. From a hidden corner into an underground passage, the snow outside continued to fall, although it was not large, but it was enough to bury the traces we had left behind.

After hiding underground we had the opportunity to have a formal conversation together.

Wang Qiang said, "Why were you hunted down by the cleaners?"

I briefly explained my experience and added, "Are there many such 'cleaners'?" Why do you call them 'cleaners'?"

Peter gritted his teeth and said, "They are the ones they want to clean up, the last free people on this planet who are still rebelling!"

Wang Qiang said: "Many years ago, there were many more cleaners than now, and there were many of us at that time. Now we have very few people and fewer cleaners. There's a lot going on behind the scenes, and I'll tell you about it when I have time, and this is not a place to stay for long, so let's keep going."

Then Wang Qiang and Peter did a check on me, probably worried that I was being tracked and tracked, and there was no problem in checking, so they continued to take me to the depths of the cave.

After a long maze of underground passages, we probably went all the way to the foot of the mountain, and Wang Qiang and Peter led me into a cave halfway up the mountainside, which was very small at first, but after several inspections and registrations, I found that there were big holes in it, and I seemed to have traveled to the movies I had seen in the past. It's a small society with a lot of people and kids running around, and I haven't seen kids in a long time. From time to time, teams of people walked by in uniform uniforms with determined eyes. There are also shops, the kind that are manned, and there are televisions hanging on the walls, which are also objects of the last century. The TV surface seemed to be playing some kind of game, and the two men were rubbing the ground quickly with broom-like things, which Peter said was called "curling", and ice sports are popular here now, which is one of the few pastimes here.

Although it is in a cave, it is not narrow, the space is very large, there is about seven or eight meters in height, and the width is about twenty or thirty meters, which is a street in the mountains. Everyone didn't wear the same nano clothes as me, but the ordinary clothes of the last century. Here I am more strange, when I passed by a lot of people looked at my outfit with curious eyes, people like me should not appear here very often.

"Take a break today, and tomorrow I'll take you to the chief."

I nodded, and I was really tired today. Then Wang Qiang left alone, and Peter took me to a cave, the cave is not large, it is estimated that there is no ten square meters. There was a bed in the cave, and Peter told me that this was the room I was resting in tonight. I had more questions I wanted to ask, but Peter seemed to have something to do, and we made an appointment to see him the next day and left.

Peter took my clothes and the laser gun with me and gave me a normal outfit here. I understand that, but at my insistence he allowed me to leave Hiro's knife behind. With mixed feelings, I fell asleep in this "real" cave and spent my first night in the real world.

The first night in the cave I slept well, felt very solid, the space was cramped, but very secure, no longer rely on the private key implanted in my hand. It was early in the morning after I got up and I decided to turn around on my own. They didn't limit my freedom. Peter and I met at eleven o'clock, and he gave me some cash last night, which was really a rarity for me, and I was going to find something to eat myself, and the beef jerky that Hiroshi had given me had been eaten by me last night.

Out of the small cave where I rested, I carefully observed the surrounding environment, although the whole street is also in the cave, but there are many monitors fake floor-to-ceiling windows, through the floor-to-ceiling windows can see the outside snowfield, sunlight through the floor-to-ceiling windows to provide enough lighting inside the cave. Floor-to-ceiling windows should be the real-time reception of the external picture, last night because it was dark did not find, this display technology if not carefully observed then completely can not see is the screen display screen.

I was carrying cash to find a place to eat breakfast, and the same rare thing as cash was breakfast here, everything here was different from what I had experienced before, and it was so different from the metaverse. I've tried to imagine the world through the images of ancient movies before, but it's unbelievable when you're actually immersed in it. Even the The Real World can't be so real. And the people here have smiles and sadness, which is completely different from in the metaverse.

Peter came after breakfast, but he said that the chief had something else to do and would take me to see him in the evening. I wasn't in a hurry and continued to wander the streets hidden in the mountains. There are different facilities in each section of the neighborhood, and there are even places and swimming pools, of course, this facility in the meta-universe is still very primitive. Walking around the block is free, but there are some passages to the outside that are handled by people in the middle, and it is not allowed to enter and exit at will.

There is not just one street, there are elevators and stairs leading up and down, I tried to walk around, there are not many floors, only six floors. But each floor spans so wide that I reckon the bottom one is already underground and perhaps connected to other places. After walking around I almost couldn't get it back. I now want to meet the leader that Peter said more and more, he should know a lot, should be able to tell me the truth of this world, answer my doubts.

In the evening it was time to eat with Peter, and I asked for a yellow stewed chicken rice. Although I don't know how they raised chickens, this must be a real chicken, and there are still unsplued hairs on the chicken skin. After eating, Peter took me to meet the chief, and finally at this moment, we reached the lowest level of Mountain Street by elevator. I guessed correctly, there are also complex underground network passages below. I saw Wang Qiang again, then I went through a complicated passage, and finally we came to a not very large hall together.

The hall is about ten square meters long, and there is a large long table in the middle, and at one end of the long table is a white-haired old man. It soon became clear to me that the chief was "she", not "him". Her white hair was neatly coiled, and the person looked very energetic. But from the wrinkles on her face, she knew that she was old, and her deep eyes seemed to tell the vicissitudes of hundreds of years.

The long table was filled with more than a dozen people, all looking at me, as if trying to get some answer from me.

The chief said in her soft and resolute voice, "Young man, tell me about your experience first."

I began to give a complete account of my experience.

Peter gritted his teeth and shouted, "They have taken over another world! We have to act, we can't continue to curl up here!"

Wang Qiang was obviously more mature, and he motioned for Peter to calm down and let me continue.

After listening to me, the leader nodded and said, "Years ago, your name is Xuanwu, right?"

I nodded.

The chief then said in a more formal tone, "Would you like to stay here and join us?"

I hesitated and said, "I have to know the truth before I do that."

The chief nodded and said, "Follow me, we'll go to the ground."

Wang Qiang said, "Chief, pay attention to your body."

The leader waved his hand and said, "It's all right, it's still tough, you have to see this with your own eyes, let's take Xuanwu to see it."

Later I learned that the chief was more than a hundred years old, and that people in his time were still using mobile phones to communicate, although people in this cave world were still using mobile phones, but for me it was already a thing of the last century.

Through the elevator we came to the top floor, and after going out from the top floor, we passed a door, which seemed to separate two different worlds. Finally we came to the outside of the mountains, there was no wind and snow tonight, and the stars were shining.

Wang Qiang set up a simple astronomical telescope on the ground and aimed into the sky.

The chief said, "Child, look. Take a closer look at that star, and today's starry sky observation conditions are very good."

I looked in the direction of the chief's finger and saw a star that was a little yellowish green. A very bright star should be the brightest one in the starry sky.

The direction of the telescope had been adjusted, and I looked through this simple optical telescope to the star. The surface of the star has a lot of green, as well as some yellow and some blue. There is no doubt that it is a star with vegetation.

"Mars?" I said, "They remodeled Mars?"

The leader shook his head: "Young man, take a closer look to see if there is a familiar feeling?"

I looked closely, and yes, the shape of the blue ocean was familiar to me, because I often went there for vacations. Venus, that's Venus. That's the The Real World home planet. I even felt that I had seen the space elevator, not only the "morning and evening line", but even the The Real World parent star was real. No wonder they built dyson spheres, presumably to make Venus cooler.

"The 'real world' home planet is real!' The morning and evening line is also real! We're working in the metaverse to help them build new worlds! I shouted that my most incredible conjecture was true! That's why we can only work as the embodiment of robots when we work, because robots are real, and only real beings can build a real world. The "morning and dusk line" is real, and the faster-than-light spacecraft is also real. The hairpin girl is also real, and everything that happened that day is real!

"Yes, they occupy the stars, they occupy the endless world, but they leave us with the illusory metaverse!" Peter responded angrily, "And they are still enslaving everyone in their habitat!" They left a cold earth behind, but they themselves were on vacation in a world that was always early in the morning!"

"How did the earth come to be like this?" I asked, I can't imagine how it all started, and the movies I've seen don't have any record of it all.

The chief looked off into the distance, as if looking into the past: "People in the last century made a mistake, and they let politicians master nuclear weapons. Politicians have a position, so more countries have taken advantage of it to acquire nuclear weapons. The countries that occupy the top of the global industrial chain are not willing to return to the bottom, and the countries at the bottom are crazy to squeeze into the top. Major alliances compete for wealth, those who lose are reluctant to concede defeat, some nuclear powers lose their minds, and eventually nuclear weapons are used by politicians who have lost their minds."

I asked, "Who first started using nuclear weapons?"

The leader smiled and said, "That doesn't matter, there were a lot of people who had nuclear weapons in the past, and there are still people who have them, and not just nuclear weapons. But children, more important than nuclear weapons are faith, and our belief in freedom and equality will never change, but it is difficult, child, and now it is especially difficult. They have turned the originally free metaverse into a virtual world of intellectual slavery, disguised imprisonment as freedom, hidden greed under mercy, and occupied thousands of stars for themselves. Boy, you have to be mentally prepared to join us and become a real warrior! Warriors fighting for freedom and rights!"

I looked at Venus hanging in the stars, at the Milky Way overhead, at the thousands of worlds there — that's our universe!