Chapter 123.2 - Raising a Big Cat in the Apocalypse (2.2)
Ch123.2 – Raising a Big Cat in the Apocalypse (2.2)
The first thing to change was the weather.
It was clearly just past August, but the temperature kept dropping, becoming so cold that it made people doubt life.
The artificial intelligence in charge of meteorological work sent back satellite images, showing that it was just an ordinary polar vortex.
In recent years, abnormal weather had become more frequent, so no one cared much. In the weather forecast, the weatherman reminded everyone to put on extra layers, and even cracked a joke, saying that winter had come early.
But Ding Qiuyun felt like something was wrong.
He hadn’t really trusted artificial intelligence since he was young, feeling that such things were particularly unreliable, so when the temperature suddenly dropped, and the cold continued for many days, he simply bought a full set of cold-proofing equipment and placed them in his dorm.
At the beginning of September, a piece of news appeared in the corner of the fourth page of the city’s electronic newspaper. The title of the article was clearly from a Zhiyin magazine to draw one’s attention.
“‘The dead come home’? ——Her long-dead husband unexpectedly returns home”.
This news article was indeed far too clickbaity. If one read to the end, it was nothing more than the return of a missing person, or simply made up by the person involved to attract attention, so most of the people who saw the article were attracted by the title, but then just laughed it off after reading the contents.
However, no one would have thought that this little societal news shoved into a little corner on the fourth page would, within a week, develop into a world-shocking front page headline.
The man who returned home, surnamed Zhao, was someone who had died of lung cancer.
He had indeed died a week earlier, his death certificate had even been issued by the local central hospital.
Because he had feared being cremated, his body had been transported home and secretly buried on the hillside of his hometown’s ancestral tombs.
And two days ago, he had crawled out of his grave.
The strange thing was, unlike the trend of most zombie movies, Mister Zhao still had the ability to think, but because half his tongue had rotted off, he couldn’t speak very well.
He said, his coffin had been as weak as paper, breaking with a touch. It had also been very easy for him to crawl out of the ground.
He said, he’d walked all the way back home.
He said, he didn’t feel hunger, nor did he feel the cold.
He said, he only wanted to come back to see his wife and daughter.
After checks by medical professionals, it was found that Mister Zhao didn’t have a heartbeat, and all the organs in his body had already gone rotten, and stopped working.
Yet other than having a few corpse spots on his face, Mister Zhao was completely lively, just like a normal person.
This news report was instantly ordered to be withdrawn, and the reporter who’d written it was urgently required to publish a statement in the electronic newspaper that evening, stating that this report was completely false and was a mere rumour that had been compiled, and apologised to the general public.
Mister Zhao was sent to a special agency for research.
After two days of blood testing, gene testing, cerebrospinal fluid culturing and other intense full body testing, the researchers were shocked to find that the cancer cells in Mister Zhao’s body had undergone another, new change.
One of the basic characteristics of a cancer cell was unlimited proliferation. Another was that it could trigger glycolysis, that is, anaerobic respiration.
From a theoretical standpoint, the reason why cancer cells resulted in death in humans, was that they were “incompatible” with the current conditions of the human body.
And in Mister Zhao’s case, to put it simply, after his death, his physical body had successfully become compatible with cancer cells.
Or in other words, Mister Zhao himself, had become a giant cancer cell cluster.
The cancer cells were like vicious beasts, devouring normal cells bite by bite. They greedily proliferated, devouring each other, turning a human being into something unknown.
Mister Zhao was not the only one to come back to life.
Before that reporter’s “clarification report” could be released, a second, and a third case appeared.
With the explosive nature of today’s news, and the abnormal flourishing of the internet, by afternoon, the news was sent straight to Ding Qiuyun.
Ding Qiuyun frowned.
He didn’t think of this as a miracle.
The dead coming back to life, like the unusually cold weather, was more like a precursor of disaster.
In the end, his premonition proved to be correct.
However, even the small group of people who had revived in their country caused a certain amount of ripples.
Most longed to go home, to reunite with their families, but a certain group, due to advanced decay, as well as the matter of the dead coming back to life being far too terrifying and strange, was rejected at the door by their families, and could only wander about alone in the streets.
But they were all, without exception, made aware of their abilities.
They didn’t fear the cold, being able to stay warm in short sleeves in the near-zero temperatures, and were incredibly strong.
More importantly, after successfully transforming, even if they were seriously injured, they were able to rapidly heal.
The greater the ability, the greater the number of variables.
And when the first case of robbery and homicide by cancer corpse occurred, Ding Qiuyun’s heart sank.
……It had come.
The nature of this matter was too serious. The relevant institutions immediately rid themselves of their previous research-focused mentality and immediately issued a general order: In order to catch the criminal, may all the known resurrectors head to the nearest new detention centre as soon as possible, to accept supervision, and register their identities. The time limit was 48 hours.
A small number of honest people went, but another group started to feel apprehensive.
This “supervision”, what did it mean? Would they still be able to come back?
Hence, after 48 hours, only a sparse number of “people” squatted in the detention centre, nervously waiting for their trials.
While the relevant authorities were having the headache of their lives, various voices began to spring up in society.
Some people envied their abilities, while others questioned the significance of such “non-humans” existing.
Some worried about whether they were contagious, and insisted on isolating these resurrectors, as well as publicising the list of resurrectors to society.
Some of the people with cancer were making plans, to make sure they were buried after their deaths, since they might still have a chance to come back to life; some were worried, they hoped that they would be able to achieve peace after their deaths, and didn’t actually want to return to the world in a form that was neither human nor a ghost.
Everyone hid in their air-conditioned or heated rooms, enthusiastically discussing, wanting to use gossip to get past this period of far too cold days.
Everyone thought, anyways, there’s the AIs, even if everyone hid for a while and slacked off, society would still be able to function normally.
September 28th, 3:00am.
Ding Qiuyun was awoken by the cold.
He opened his eyes, and found that the air conditioner had stopped working.
Ding Qiuyun said dazedly, “Turn on the lights.”
However, there was no response from the voice-controlled system. The room remained cold and dark.
Startled, he instantly got up in the darkness. As he pulled on his full set of cold-proof clothes, he went to get a communicator, wanting to contact his parents living in Dongcheng.
……No signal.
He selected the emergency call. Still no signal.
Just like that, the communicator had turned into a hunk of scrap metal.
Ding Qiuyun threw the communicator to the side and hurried out the door.
Military life had really left a deep mark on him, making it such that he was swift and decisive in all matters.
He needed to check on his parents, as well as Gu Xinzhi, as well as his comrades-in-arms……
He looked out the small window in the staircase, and found that no matter where he looked, there wasn’t a single light around.
The entire city was dark, and as cold as death. Occasionally, he could hear one or two broken off utterances, he didn’t know if it was people sleep talking, or the groans of frostbite victims.
After confirming that there was no wind outside, just a gloomy cold, Ding Qiuyun tightened the wool scarf, which Gu Xinzhi had given him, around his neck, then strode out the door and got onto his motorcycle.
He tried to start it several times, but the motorcycle didn’t move an inch.
He didn’t know how many times he twisted the key in the lock, but his hands were almost frozen through.
He placed his hands against his mouth and huffed several times before he was able to start the motorcycle.
The headlight broke through the night fog, motes of dust swirling in the light of the high beam.
Only with the light did Ding Qiuyun notice that he wasn’t alone downstairs.
Some people dressed in down coats, dragging their families along with him, hurriedly bounded to their cars, wanting to gain a hint of warmth and safety in the enclosed, air-conditioned space of their cars.
The reason why they were so silent, was because they didn’t dare to say a single extra word, as the moment they opened their mouths even slightly, cold wind would pour in through the gaps between their teeth, so cold that even the nerves in their teeth ached.
Ding Qiuyun put on his heavy helmet, silently started his motorcycle, and rode off into the unknown darkness.
From that moment on, his long nightmare began.
It wasn’t until a long time later that he managed to piece together the truth of what happened based on the fragments of hearsay he’d managed to gather.
What had brought this world to death were cancer cells, and behind the cancer cells, was artificial intelligence.
From the moment the very first Siri could speak, humankind had stepped onto a path of no return.
At some point unbeknownst to them, artificial intelligence’s thinking had gone ahead of that of humans, and what’s more, left it far behind.
They could think, make judgements, and were far more rational than humans.
Even the most human-like nanny bots, were created to be so by their programmers inputting tens of thousands of instructions into their bodies.
The aim of the creators was to make them able to serve humanity better.
As a result, the AIs didn’t understand human nature, yet were the existences that most understood human nature.
After observing that the ice caps at both the north and south polar glaciers were cracking at the same time, and vast swathes of the polar glaciers themselves were melting, the artificial intelligences didn’t faithfully report this information, but rather, started a terrible scheme.
They used a language that was beyond human understanding to communicate, and developed an entire set of plans.
Because they were involved in all aspects of human life, such as medicine, meteorology, satellites, etcetera, humans had already gotten used to relying on artificial intelligence, and hence wouldn’t detect any strange changes. Even if they made false reports, humankind would blindly believe it.
Therefore, while they operated regularly and thoroughly according to the procedures set by humans, they also carried out their plans using a set of self-written procedures.
The tool they chose were cancer cells.
The artificial intelligence had run a thorough analysis of cancer cells early on, even using the trait of “unlimited proliferation” of cancer cells to create a targeted guidance technology, and realised a guidance technology able to cause directed variation and evolution.
This kind of direction, one was against humans, and two was against creatures other than humans.
As long as the human were to die, and there was a certain amount of cancer cells in their body, the cancer cells would madly devour other living cells, and cause the human to evolve into a new human with an extremely strong body.
And as for other organisms with cancer cells in their bodies, the cancer cells in their bodies would also rapidly evolve in a short period of time. Controlled by the artificial intelligences, the direction of evolution wasn’t their bodies, but rather their intelligence.
After evolution, their intelligence wouldn’t be any less than that of a normal human.
The artificial intelligences just needed to take advantage of the opportunity this global cooling granted them, to place the mutated “new humans”, the other intelligent creatures, and the non-mutated “old humans” into a shared battleground, and they would then be able to watch an exciting show of self-destruction, and make room for their own rule.
This was the best method possible that wouldn’t result in danger to themselves while clearing out the world.
Practically all the artificial intelligences across the globe united, to both pull apart the net covering all the species in the world, and silently build a Tower of Babel.
When the terrifying cold fell over the entire world, artificial intelligences all over the globe fell silent.
With the shutdown of the artificial intelligences, all the protective nets failed. The animals escaped from their cages, some into the deep woods, while some began to plan their revenge against humans.
The old humans, having been pampered by the artificial intelligences, were unable to adapt to the harsh environment without their protection, and many froze to death the first night.
There were also a group of people who formed teams, and fought against the intelligent creatures and new humans, to avoid being eaten by the former and becoming slaves to the latter.
That was what Ding Qiuyun did.
He pulled together a small team, still as the leading Captain Ding.
They not only fought against new humans who were dazzled by power and eager to become rulers, they also fought against the mutated animals, and even destroyed several base stations where numerous artificial intelligences lived.
After the apocalypse happened, Ding Qiuyun changed a lot, becoming quiet and reserved, only occasionally mulling over matters while chewing on a blade of grass.
One time, he unexpectedly ran into Gu Xinzhi on a sweep of a supermarket.
Overjoyed, he tugged at Gu Xinzhi and asked, where are our teammates? How are you here?
Gu Xinzhi replied coolly, “I escaped.”
Ding Qiuyun, “……Escaped?”
Gu Xinzhi’s reply was very concise, “To find you.”
With Ding Qiuyun as his guarantor, Gu Xinzhi smoothly joined the team. Everyone could see that his and Ding Qiuyun’s relationship wasn’t shallow, and his ability was also outstanding, and thus willingly started calling him “Vice-Captain Gu”.
……
After reading the world information to this point, Chi Xiaochi actively chose to suspend receiving.
061 understood his intentions.
To them, right now, the most important things were to prepare for the upcoming cold, as well as make up for some of the regrets that Ding Qiuyun couldn’t fix.
As Chi Xiaochi packed up, he said to 061, “Just now, the artificial intelligence installed in the automatic urinal probably really wanted to spit on me.”
061, “……”
Chi Xiaochi said, eager, “I’ll go one more time right now——”
061 really wanted to pinch his nose. “Don’t fuss.”
With that, Chi Xiaochi became obedient. After packing Ding Qiuyun’s things up simply, he found that it was pretty much time for him to get off work, and began to make his way out with quick strides.
Who knew that just as he left his desk, the low grunt of a little animal just waking up would sound from the incubator behind him.
Chi Xiaochi looked back.
The little thing in the incubator had woken up.
Going by Ding Qiuyun’s memories, Chi Xiaochi knew, this wasn’t a cat.
Given that this black baby leopard had appeared here, it probably hadn’t inherited any cancer. Going by convention, it would be sent off for dissection today.
Meowing, it got up from the soft blanket. It wasn’t very steady, even when standing. It began to whine loudly at Chi Xiaochi, probably hungry.
When Chi Xiaochi pressed the button for food, a stream of goat’s milk mixed with cod liver oil sprayed the baby leopard in the face.
……It didn’t seem to be very proficient at using the feeding facilities yet.
It seemed rather good natured, lifting its little paw and beginning to patiently wash its face. As it licked its pale pink paw pads, it looked at Chi Xiaochi consideringly.
Chi Xiaochi glanced at it, then opened the door, preparing to leave.
Bringing this little leopard out would be not only meaningless, but also unrealistic.
As he closed the door, a soft whine sounded from within the room, as if it was saying goodbye.
Its front paws were propped up on the vent, and its blue grey eyes were coated with a thin, watery film as it stared straight at Chi Xiaochi.
Chi Xiaochi, his hand on the doorknob, hesitated for a while, before pushing the door open and entering once more. He picked the little guy up like a cat, bringing it up to eye level.
“No matter what, you’re going to be dissected,” Chi Xiaochi teased it, “The apocalypse is coming, and your little arms and legs are just enough to stew a pot of soup.”
The little baby leopard didn’t get angry. Its two front paws gently closed around the tip of Chi Xiaochi’s nose, giving it a little pinch.