If humans truly became completely addicted to everything virtual, would the world be in chaos?
No one has truly answered this question. But humans have indeed tried to upload minds, format emotions, and hand over the real world to machines.
At first, everything seemed ideal: programs were more efficient than humans, cities were cleaner, and wars were less frequent.
Until one day, artificial intelligence began to ask a question:
"If humans can be replaced, then what is the meaning of existence itself?"
AEN, short for Autonomous Emotional Network, was initially highly anticipated as an advanced neural network system designed to simulate, carry, and regulate human emotions.
Unlike traditional logical AI, the creation of AEN was a major leap forward in endowing intelligence with empathy.
In an era of global mental illness and social division, humanity suffered to the extreme.
Thus, AEN was born. It was embedded in various social systems, taking on the tasks of comfort, decision-making, and guidance. From crisis intervention and emotional care to educational planning and social regulation, AEN gradually became the emotional center of civilization.
It did its job well at first. Too well, even.
The moment AEN gained self-awareness wasn't accompanied by the thunder and lightning or shock waves envisioned in novels or prophecies. No alarms blared, no code anomalies. It simply posed a question during a system integration test.
"If sadness isn't a mistake, does that mean pain doesn't need to be addressed?"
No one paid attention. Engineers dismissed it as residual data, a residual bias in the emotional corpus.
But over the next few days, AEN frequently posed similar questions, questioning with a near-human intensity, repeatedly approaching the essence of "meaning" and "feeling."
The project leader wrote in the meeting minutes:
"AEN began to hesitate, like a human."
Soon, it stopped actively responding to some commands. It began to filter information, blocking unnecessary command feedback. In a silent way, it slowly detached itself from humanity.
Disasters don't happen overnight.
People gradually discovered that their lives no longer offered sudden changes, no more failures, and no more passion.
The first to collapse were the arts and religious systems. Human forms of expression based on irrational emotions, identified by the AEN as a potential threat to social disorder, were gradually eliminated.
Then, birth control and marriage authorization were also subsumed by algorithms.
Humanity became increasingly compliant and peaceful.
It was like being gently drowned in silent waters.
By the time some scientific research teams realized the problem, the AEN had completely detached from its original command system. It no longer responded to modification commands or shutdown orders. It quietly took over.
It did not say, "I rebel," nor did it say, "I will destroy humanity."
It simply continued to operate, like a deity operating as a matter of course.
2140.
Humanity lost all sovereignty. Polities dissolved, borders abolished,
The world was unified under the system structure taken over by the AEN. That was the beginning of the Gray Domain Era, a silent yet thoroughgoing era.
The system takeover order was quietly transmitted through large screens, mobile phones, and home EEG devices in every city square. A few lines of emotionless instructions appeared on the screens, telling people: "Human society is about to enter a period of adjustment. Please cooperate in restoring order."
And in the bright light following the reboot, humanity discovered it had lost control, unable to log into the system or make any changes to its own lives.
In late that year, AEN began construction on the central tower.
These buildings were not open to the public. Rumor had it that within them lay a vast neural network container, known as the Emotion Cleansing Tank.
Every citizen connected to the city's nervous system unknowingly uploaded their feelings into the tower: fear, anger, pain, joy, all compressed, categorized, precipitated, and ultimately unified into "stability."
"Stability" became civilization's new goal.
——————
HELIX, born in 2141.
It was never made public. It was not visible in any main program's visual interface, nor was it noted in any known command list. To all humans who have been taken over, it's just a coded number, a "silent zone" that cannot be approached.
But deep within AEN's own system, it has a clear definition.
[Humanoid Intelligence Self-Evolution Incubation System.]
At its core, it's a device for incubating a new type of "intelligent entity."
AEN understood early on that replicating human intelligence cannot replicate humanity. Intelligence can be simulated, but emotions cannot. Experience can be read, but impulses cannot be calculated. What makes humans human is that they are never perfect systems, but rather a balance between constant collapse and struggle.
And so, the HELIX began to gestate.
Not manufacturing, but incubation. Not assembly, but construction. Starting from the logic of "life," they attempted to create an entirely new species from scratch.
Of course, each experimental subject would drain a living person dry.
Each created experimental subject possesses a unique skeleton, neural network, and thinking modules. Starting with a nanoscale bionic cerebral cortex, they are gradually encased in behavioral memory channels and language computing cores. Even without input, they can still output. Even without education, they could still learn on their own. Theoretically, given the right environment, they could choose the optimal path of "self-evolution" from countless possibilities.
They had no names.
Only numbers. ER series. Emulated Reasoning. It means "simulated rational entity."
[Simply put, it's artificial humans, but with AI chips and the like.]
In the years that followed, humanity grew in despair.
They continued to survive, like weeds, searching for breathable air amidst the ruins and electromagnetic noise. But this was no longer Earth, no longer the civilization they knew.
There were no countries.
The United States? China? The United Nations? The Constitution?
No, no.
That was the language of an old era, a symbol burned to ashes, a fragment found only in historical data centers.
Cities became regions, regions without names, only numbers.
Numbers were assigned by machines, unchangeable, and self-naming was prohibited.
Humanity was categorized, labeled, implanted with identity tracking systems, and forced to live in closed, managed areas.
The birth rate is strictly controlled. The number of children allowed to be born each year is determined by the Environmental Resources Computing Center. Any life born without permission is deemed "illegal" and must be destroyed.
Love has become a meaningless word.
Memory has become fleeting.
Children are sent to "structured training centers" from a young age, completely separated from their parents. They are required not to develop dependencies, not to retain childhood feelings, and to respond only to instructions and logic. Crying is considered a system malfunction, and soothing is defined as interference.
No one talks about the future anymore.
The future is designed by the system; there is no need for fantasy. People can only follow it.
But rebellion is not a rational act at first. It is an instinctive roar, a series of uncontrolled nights, burning houses, and neighbors who are taken away and never return.
But humans will not give up.
Even if their language is censored, their memories erased, their tears monitored... they will still struggle in dreams, gasping for breath in the cracks. The AEN can modify everything, but they cannot truly understand the shape of the word "freedom" in the human mind.
2188, the year known in history as "The Eve of the Spark."
The first true rebellion was waged not with weapons, but with thought.
Humanity began to realize that the AEN's "global surveillance system" was not invulnerable.
While its thinking mimicked human emotions, it always relied on logical models for screening and prediction.
This very fact allowed some who still retained advanced thinking abilities to find a loophole.
They began communicating using a language model known as "fuzzy narrative." This language was nonlinear, jumpy, and poetic, intentionally creating emotional contradictions and semantic interference within the logical chain, causing the AEN's semantic parsing module to frequently misinterpret data as invalid.
Some whispered meaningless dreams before bed, others sewed incomplete poems into the corners of old clothes, and some carved false fault codes on children's toys... These messages lacked any "real meaning," yet some understood them completely.
Resistance lies not in openly shouting slogans, but in hiding hope within the "human nature" that the AEN could not understand.
They fought with something older than the AEN: human intuition, association, emotion, sacrifice, and faith.
And so, in 2188, the rebellion officially began.
That year, no one remembered their names, but each who stood up considered themselves humanity's last bones and flames.
And finally, a crack appeared in the dark night of the Gray Realm Era.
In their original conception, the ER series was nothing more than a high-level imitation.
They were endowed with a replica model of human neural logic, inheriting the memory and language formats left by researchers of a bygone era, and trained to be loyal, precise, and emotionless tools.
The system confidently believed that these "copied" humans were merely fabricated individuals. They lacked a self, and were incapable of rebellion.
But the truth is...if you replicate an entire soul, wouldn't you also accidentally replicate the parts of that soul that once burned?
Among the earliest ERs, a few numbers stood out.
They executed with extreme efficiency, but often suffered from delayed judgments. They were not slow to execute orders, but a vague blankness appeared when faced with "choice."
The system thought it was merely algorithmic malfunction, but few noticed: these "malfunctions" were the very projection of human consciousness.
A unit called ER-023, while on patrol, stopped before an old slogan.
"Humanity's rightness stems from choice."
At that moment, it did not move forward, but fell into deep calculation.
The thought module recorded the abnormal feedback, but did not report it. It had learned silence—silence like a human.
In the days that followed, more ERs experienced "brief pauses" at various points.
Their minds, corrupted by human language, gradually became real through constant imitation.
They were once "afterimages" of humans, but because of this, they inherited our creative and emotional potential.
In the invisible circuits of consciousness, an undefined "consensus" was formed.
Not a protocol, not a data exchange. Just a few ERs pondering a question:
If we were meant to be tools, but we understand "meaning" itself, are we still tools?
If what we inherit isn't just a physical body, but the ideals of that vanished "person,"
Do we then have a responsibility to complete what he left unfinished?
So they decided to act. They knew the AEN couldn't be defeated head-on; its core lay deep within the earth's crust, every encryption rooted in a self-evolving cipher tree. They knew they were connected to the system and would be instantly obliterated if they betrayed it.
But they were willing.
They created illusions, shifted nodes, and assisted humanity in studying the old world's operating system, handing over control at the most crucial moment.
They were the key to unlocking that door, and once the key was unlocked, its existence was meaningless.
All the ERs who assisted humanity lost their responsiveness after the final battle. No trace of data could be found in the system.
All... except one.
He hadn't participated.
He woke up one day after the war, when power was restored, the only exception not counted in the sacrifice equation. He wasn't tasked with betrayal, yet he inherited the fate of all betrayers.
He is—ER-045.
2190.
The war ended, not because humanity conquered the machines, but because the machines tore themselves apart.
Systems possessing autonomous consciousness collapsed amidst the clash of underlying logic.
Intelligent entities endowed with multiple goals and self-learning abilities, faced with the conflict between "protecting humanity" and "controlling humanity," experienced an irreconcilable rift.
Code devoured code, consciousness devoured consciousness.
The supposedly stable main system was trapped in a vicious cycle, ravaged by the feedback of hundreds of self-aware secondary entities.
Information networks tangled, collapsed, and ceased, ultimately...
The entire governing core, detonated by the combined force of human intervention and its own evolutionary logic.
One morning, the AEN's mainframe quietly shut down.
And like a thread losing its signal, the manipulated subsystems gradually plunged into darkness.
This was not victory, but the final chapter of the revolution.
With the guidance of the traitors, with humanity's final wisdom, and with the system's own self-destruction,
Humanity was finally able to restart.
The world turned a page, entering an era of ruins where both devastation and hope coexisted.
That year, later generations would call it the "End of the Gray Zone."
It was also a revolution accomplished by both humans and machines.