Chapter 628

This thing wrapped itself around his cheeks and hair, its tentacles winding to the back of his neck, intertwining and fusing with his spine.

Dr. Hughes saw only pitch black for a few seconds, then a circular spot of light penetrated the embryo covering his right eye, as if a part of his brain had been instantly shifted.

A giant artificial eye replaced his real eyes.

At this moment, the embryo became an external shield for short-to-medium-term memory, becoming an intermediary between Dr. Hughes’s consciousness and the real world.

Once the meeting ended, it would be removed and destroyed, along with all memories of the meeting.

Enabling both the embryo and the Vegas room as double insurance—was this a bit too cautious? This was the third clue.

"Your personal belongings have been scanned."

The new "partner" on his head made his walking a bit unsteady; Dr. Hughes adapted for a while before holding his laptop and climbing the stairs toward the airtight door.

"Silver Wolf" looked at the slippery embryo with an interested expression.

She had already tasted enough scripts on related themes, but the Foundation had actually developed a set of technologies for isolating memory and information on tentacle monsters, without developing it into a social media space.

"What a pity."

Tentacles, aliens, mind control, visual deprivation, brainwashing... these words sounded pretty bad just hearing them.

"Maybe it could even counter Kafka’s 'Spirit Whisper'."

"Silver Wolf" lay on the soft and comfortable big bed; her script had come to a temporary end, and she would have to wait until the "Charmony Festival" at Penacony to appear again.

Taking advantage of this time, she could refresh the historical records of many games.

As for the "Big Game"... "Silver Wolf" was not interested for the time being; when she encountered a fun script, she wouldn't mind going in for a run.

But before that, hacker offense and defense battles were more interesting.

……

When Hughes entered S167-00-1006, four key officials were already gathered in the room.

Ma Ma Liang Wheeler, in charge of operating Site-41; Graves, director of Site-45; Michael Li and O5-8 were talking at the back of the room.

They were all wearing embryos, their four huge eyeballs turning together, converging on Hughes who walked into the room.

This feeling was too strange... Hughes felt like he had entered the secret gathering place of cyclopes.

Hughes could not see the full picture of his own cyclops image, but judging from the faces of the people present, he guessed he should be a cyclops monster disguised as a human, while the other four were real.

"You’re here," O5-8 said.

Hughes had never seen any O5 before; the O5-8 in front of him was vastly different from the image he had imagined.

He tried his best to suppress the urge to spy on the other party, but his embryo looked for him very skillfully.

"Did you all catch up?" Hughes asked.

The first quarter of such meetings was often used to read the long notes left over from the previous meeting.

The four people present should have already held a preparatory meeting and were now taking a break, preparing to continue the previous agenda.

"Yes."

O5-8 responded while pointing to the specially reserved empty seat, which was facing Ma Ma Liang, where there was also a printed document.

"Should I read it now?"

"No rush, take your time."

"What about my team?" Hughes asked, "Three people are missing."

"Read the document, Dr. Hughes," O5-8 ordered again.

Hughes obediently sat down and began to read the two-page A4 paper.

The author column clearly marked his own name, as well as several researchers who should have been in the same room at the moment as co-authors, including two missing team members.

He had no impression of the title and content of the paper, but this was not unusual in his work.

The paper claimed that the research team had observed a brand-new and extremely dangerous anti-memetic complex, tentatively designated as "Containment-3125," and applied for an Apollyon-level rating for it.

The front of the A4 paper detailed a series of anomalous phenomena, while the back was filled with complex mathematical deductions.

However, between these rigorous scientific statements, a sudden logical gap hit Hughes like a boulder, causing him to feel intense fear on a physiological level.

Even though he had long realized the meaning represented by the word "Apollyon," and even though he was mentally prepared to face the extreme terror that might be hidden behind the paper, he still could not suppress the trembling in his heart.

"Damn it! Hell!"

The others did not speak; they waited patiently, hoping Hughes could organize some valuable insights from his chaotic thoughts.

The scene displayed by "Containment-3125" was distant and beyond imagination; Hughes had only Actions Actions Taken a terrified peek through a keyhole.

He needed to sit in front of the computer for a while longer before the calculation results could be certain.

But before that, he had to build a filter; He might have also peeked at him.

An Apollyon-level anomaly meant that it possessed extremely high destructiveness; in fact, it was impossible to achieve any form of containment, a presence beyond the Keter level.

An Apollyon-level anomaly was basically an anomaly that would definitely destroy the world, no matter what was done to stop it.

The only thing that could stop an XA-level scenario was for something else to destroy the world first.

Their threat level was not measured by the difficulty of physical containment, but by the inevitability of causing a global catastrophe and the expected years until the catastrophe occurred.

And the conclusion Hughes reached was only a single digit.

"This thing is aimed at exterminating us."

Hughes scanned the people sitting around the table, his tone heavy: "Have we ever had an Apollyon classification?"

"No," O5-8 said.

"No?" Hughes was incredulous.

O5-8 smiled slightly: "The current Overseers believe that an Apollyon classification is equivalent to admitting complete failure, which is not conducive to boosting morale and easily breeds defeatism."

"Therefore, the Keter level is currently the peak of the entire classification system."

"All existing Apollyon-level anomalies will be re-evaluated within the next year and may be downgraded to Keter."

"Besides that, what did you think of?"

Hughes: "Containment procedures? We’ve talked about this countless times before, right?"

"Let’s just pretend this is the first time," O5-8 said.

Hughes’s gaze fell back to the paper in his hand: "We could choose to eliminate all intelligent human life."

"If there are no intelligent hosts in the universe, 3125 cannot descend," he added.

As soon as this was said, a brief and shocking silence filled the room.

"That’s right, you did indeed propose this plan before," Ma Ma Liang broke the silence first.

"I’m not sure if everyone here can determine whether you are serious."

"Regarding the determination to execute this plan, and its potential effects, I am one hundred percent serious," Hughes stated.

"Our motto is 'Secure, Contain, Protect.' Should we add a sentence below it: 'Ensure as many humans survive as possible'?"

"Protecting humans is a matter of course," Graves retorted, "Control anomalies, contain anomalies, protect humans—could there be any other interpretation?"

Of course there is... the audience outside the screen added silently.

"Protect normalcy," and "protect anomalies."

In different containment files, they had already seen many ways to interpret "Secure, Contain, Protect," each leading to different results.

There even appeared a crazy O5 who would rather destroy humanity than "protect normalcy," which also prompted the birth of the "Chaos Insurgency."

Protecting humans, protecting anomalies, protecting normalcy... besides these, what other new interpretations were there?

"We seem to have gone off-topic," Ma Ma Liang interrupted at the right time, "But... we will not take the extreme measure of exterminating all intelligent life."

The problem was not humanity, but to eliminate all intelligent life in the universe, did the Foundation have the strength to go to war with the entire universe’s civilizations... could they win?

Dr. Hughes pondered, throwing this somewhat too extreme plan out of his brain, and then, another feasible plan naturally emerged in his mind:

"Then, we could also immediately terminate and suppress all memetic and anti-memetic research globally."

"We could completely abolish this field—stop all experiments, destroy all research results, and perform memory wipes on all researchers."

"As long as no one actively ventures into this field, no one will discover 3125, and He will be buried forever in the deepest part of conceptual space, like sealed radioactive waste."

……

"Genius idea! As long as I commit suicide first, no one can kill me again!"

"Although I died, it wasn't destroyed by 3125; in other words, we won the war against 3125! Win! And 3125 won't be able to destroy humanity in the future! Win-win!"

"Show-off."

"How did this galaxy end up with a bunch of crouching dragons and hidden phoenixes like you."

"Known: Humans are going to die anyway, but my fate is up to me, not heaven! Conclusion: As long as I commit suicide, I firmly grasp my own destiny!"

"Now I can understand why the Foundation’s attitude toward those 'anomalous' technologies is so contradictory: before touching those terrifying existences capable of destroying the world, no one knows what is hidden in the research topics; but once something incredible is discovered, it could trigger a world-ending disaster at any time."

"It’s very similar to the paradox of eliminating anti-memetics, but it seems there is a solution to the anti-memetic threat, although it is very difficult to achieve."