Chapter 145 The Algorithm

While the two data terminals were happily exchanging affection, Hao Ren was already busy.

Originally, the Petrifying Turtle Rock had only one set of equipment for analyzing the Nu Ling (wrathful spirits), but after learning about the news of Santu Su IV, he immediately ordered the onboard factory to work overtime to manufacture a new one. For the efficiency of the onboard factory, manufacturing such equipment with blueprints didn't take much time. Hao Ren took the new equipment out of his portable space, installed the energy core, and debugged it. The equipment immediately emitted a soft buzzing sound, and the bowl-shaped groove in the center of the equipment began to emit a faint light.

"Now, if you put the Nu Ling into this, you can read its data," Hao Ren pointed to the equipment, "but according to our several experiments, the data read will be very chaotic. It includes not only the memory of the Nu Ling, but also its own 'existence data', like a messy hard drive. All the stored files and system files are scrambled into bytes and stuffed together, even if it is read out, it is meaningless."

Galia Zhuoer looked at the equipment Hao Ren took out with interest: "Very delicate thing... It doesn't hurt to try."

With that, she controlled the magic stones to float towards this side. The strong magnetic field formed by the magic stones was like an invisible container, dragging the Nu Ling to the top of the analyzer. After careful docking, the violent light was transferred to the groove without any danger.

The analysis module of the equipment immediately went online, and in a burst of buzzing, it began to read the information of the Nu Ling.

Nangong Wuyue looked nervously at the side. Every time something about the Nu Ling happened, it would remind her of her missing parents, and she was particularly nervous at this time. The people around her had long known about the problem of this Siren girl, so they had vigilantly run away before this. This time, no one was caught by Wuyue's tail...

"Gun" stood restlessly on one leg, swaying back and forth, staring at the faint light emitted by the running instrument. The static electricity here made her feel inexplicably nervous and restrained. Hao Ren noticed the cat girl's reaction and reached out to press the latter's head: "Don't move."

Due to the reading program of the previous Nu Ling, this set of equipment ran more smoothly, and the Nu Ling sample provided by Galia Zhuoer was in better "health" than the one Hao Ren caught, so some data was quickly extracted. Some strange and bizarre pictures and strings of characters began to appear on the holographic projection that came with the analyzer. They refreshed quickly, full of high-tech feeling, and as always, useless.

"I knew it would be like this," Hao Ren shrugged, "It was the same when I read another Nu Ling before, only garbled characters appeared."

Galia Zhuoer looked thoughtfully at those chaotic symbols and suddenly muttered, "Wait... It's not necessarily garbled."

Hao Ren immediately looked up at her.

"Although I don't have as much experience with Nu Ling as you do, I have more experience than you in other aspects," Galia Zhuoer pointed to the garbled symbols, "Look at these symbols... Although there is no pattern, some things appear repeatedly, like markers. Also, these pictures are chaotic, but these chaotic pictures are continuous, they should be able to form some kind of... image."

Hao Ren rubbed his chin: "Well, I thought about what you said, but it's meaningless to mark and connect these continuous parts and repeated parts. It's still a mess, at most it will change from static mosaics to dynamic mosaics - what's the difference?"

Galia Zhuoer shook her head: "This at least proves that the information is not meaningless. The existence of regularity means the existence of data. The problem is not in the data, but in our reading method."

Hao Ren waited quietly for the following, while Galia Zhuoer closed her eyes and meditated. This dragon had been an inspector for thousands of years and had seen many worlds and many races. Her erudition was the most valuable asset. After a period of recollection, the Dragon Queen opened her eyes: "I remembered a strange race I encountered many years ago. They would be infected with a very special disease called non-linear amnesia."

Lily perked up her ears: "Non-linear?"

She has a straight head, so she is particularly sensitive when she hears the word "non-linear."

"That's right, non-linear," Galia Zhuoer nodded, "It can also be called 'disordered amnesia'. Memories are not in order, and there is no concept of time. The memory of the patient is like a plane, all the information is placed on the same layer, yesterday's things are mixed with today's things, and the things of childhood are mixed with the things of adulthood. In mild cases, it is still possible to distinguish memories in units of years, but in severe cases, it is completely messed up, even the memories one second before and after will be mixed together, byte by byte. Do you know what consequences this will have?"

Hao Ren imagined it and broke into a cold sweat: "They can't think at all."

"That's right, the essence of this disease is the loss of the ability to sort out memories, so patients feel that everything is happening at the same time. Every detail from the first time they fell as a child to every detail of their giving birth to children is piled up together. Patients in the late stage lie in bed like vegetative people and cannot move. Their brains are filled with memories, but because of the lack of an index, they can't do anything, and they don't even know what they are thinking."

Hao Ren thought of the files on the computer's hard drive: the files originally arranged according to the date of establishment suddenly lost all time stamps, so the entire folder would be a mess. He knew what Galia Zhuoer wanted to say: "You said that the memory of the Nu Ling is non-linear?"

"I suspect so, but I'm not sure," Galia Zhuoer frowned, "The race I mentioned had non-linear memories because of illness, but if the Nu Ling were born like this... how would they live? I can't imagine how to generate mental activity under non-linear memory."

"Don't forget that they are 'Nu Ling'," Hao Ren said quickly, "They are actually dead. The eldest son destroyed the self-awareness of these spiritual beings... I understand what's going on. The eldest son destroyed the sorting part of their memories while destroying the self-awareness of the Nu Ling, causing all the information to be piled up in disorder. We should first find a way to establish an index for the Nu Ling, and then we can reorganize the useful information, instead of burying our heads to decode it."

"How to start?" Galia Zhuoer looked at Hao Ren, "Reorganizing this information without an index is as difficult as reorganizing a city from a piece of yellow sand."

Hao Ren didn't know what to do either. In these professional fields, his knowledge was not as good as Galia Zhuoer's, but the data terminal suddenly floated over from the side: "We don't necessarily have to use a timetable as an index. This unit can try some other algorithms—at least there is an idea now."

Hao Ren immediately vacated the console: "Okay, you try."

The data terminal embedded itself in the console of the analyzer, and the surface quickly flashed a blue light, and then the data and images on the surrounding holographic projections began to refresh at an even more alarming speed, and gradually changed. Some symbols were extracted separately, and then new entries were created under them. Hao Ren couldn't understand what this was doing, but he knew that the data terminal was already trying to compile a directory of the Nu Ling's memory.

This directory may not be arranged according to the order of time, but may be arranged according to the size of the data package or the similarity of the data - for a creature that has been dead for more than 10,000 years, it is not necessary to know the exact time of every event it has experienced, as long as it knows what it has experienced and lists them all.

"It seems to be working." Nangong Sanba suddenly said with a serious expression.

Hao Ren stared at the holographic projection: "Can you see it?"

"No, I guessed it, I'm just showing off."

"..."

But Nangong Sanba guessed right, the new algorithm really started to work.

The blue light on the surface of the data terminal dissipated, and it popped out of the groove with a click, and said in a cheerful tone: "It's done. This unit has reset the retrieval method. There was a problem with our previous decoding ideas. What it needs is not decoding at all."

Hao Ren looked at the analyzer in surprise: "Can it be read now?"

"It's being read. Because the algorithm is still not very perfect, the reading speed and accuracy are not very high, but at least it can read useful things, which is much better than before," the data terminal said happily and proudly, "Now we can start working on sample No. 1."