Chapter 363: The Secret of 3911 (Part 4)

“But I never expected… I miscalculated one thing.”

The aged Pompey closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and struck his own forehead before letting out a deep sigh.

“I had clearly left more than enough storage space. Based on the data footprint of each Digital Life, it could have housed a population of 1,200 trillion simultaneously… That capacity should have been impossible to fill.”

“Lifespan and the ability to die were locked at the foundational level. Even if humanity reproduced at a high rate for 30,000 years, they would never have come close to this limit.”

“But I still underestimated the complexity of life. It wasn’t the humans from Earth who underwent Consciousness Upload that caused this disaster…”

“It was the brand-new lives, the new digital humans, born inside the Digital World.”

Pompey opened his eyes and stared at the ground.

“They are a completely new form of life, beyond the understanding of any previous scientific discipline. They appear out of thin air, spontaneously generated. In appearance and behavior, they’re no different from normal humans… But in terms of their fundamental structure, they are intrinsically different from the digital humans created through Consciousness Upload.”

“I had assumed the data footprint of these new lives would be about the same as a normal Digital Life, but reality dealt me a heavy blow—”

“These new lives born in the Digital World, though they were like newborn infants, were actually indefensible data bombs in the digital domain!”

“Their life form is undoubtedly superior to that of ordinary humans, and far more full of potential. But at the same time… their consciousness, emotions, and thoughts are like a nuclear chain reaction, growing exponentially with every passing second!”

“As more and more of these newborns appeared in the Digital World, this phenomenon became completely unstoppable. The interactions and intersections between them consumed storage capacity at an absurdly exaggerated rate.”

“Back then, I was truly too arrogant… I am not a God; I have no right to create life. This is the Creator’s punishment for me, forcing me to witness the annihilation of human civilization with my own hands.”

“Compared to the uncontrollable data bombs inside the Virtual World, the continuous production of storage hardware in the external, physical world was a drop in the bucket, providing no relief whatsoever.”

“But I couldn’t stop the birth of these newborns, because humanity’s lifespan is locked and unchangeable. Without enough new births, human civilization would be doomed to perish after a single generation lived out its natural course.”

“A few years ago, when I discovered this trend, I did everything I could to fix it, to reverse it. But nothing worked… All I could do was watch helplessly as humanity marched toward its doom, waiting for the day the Virtual Digital World would malfunction and collapse.”

“Yesterday, I finally calculated the exact date…”

The remorseful old man trembled, his face blurred by tears.

“September 17th, 2045.”

He spoke the date with utter terror:

“On that day, the entire Digital World will reach its limit, then collapse and reboot.”

“I can’t predict the exact moment of the collapse and reboot. On September 17th, 2045, the entire world will be on a knife’s edge, like an overinflated balloon, a teetering skyscraper, or a precariously balanced scale… Any tiny, unexpected shock will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, causing the entire world to crumble.”

“What’s even more despairing… is that the world after the collapse and reboot will not improve. It will endlessly repeat this final period of time—repeating, collapsing, and rebooting over and over.”

“This is the final limit of the Virtual World’s architecture, a cage human civilization can never break out of. Even 30,000 years from now, 300,000 years, 300 million years! Humanity will only loop infinitely within this brief, desperate span of time…”

Pompey covered his face, sobbing uncontrollably.

“Thirty-nine minutes and eleven seconds. That is the final time limit for human civilization!”

“And… it is also the end of everything…”