I Have A Super USB Drive

by <unknown>

  However, if the instantiation had succeeded, why was there a problem of insufficient energy?

  Could it be…

  Chen Chen frowned. This was a detail he had not considered – the USB drive's ability might not be instantiation. Rather, it created a link between reality and a fictitious space, allowing him to bring out an object from that world into reality!

  This was the truth about the USB drive.

  In other words, the energy required by the USB drive was not used to materialize things out of thin air. It merely supplied energy for the channel connecting the two spaces.

  This explained why only a few hundred thousand kWh of electricity, which was the equivalent of one trillion joules of energy, could paradoxically create something out of thin air.

  After all, when a hydrogen bomb produced 1kg of helium, it could generate a hundred trillion joules of energy. The reduction in mass throughout this process would be negligible. Evidently, when matter was converted into energy, it far surpassed the value of "one trillion joules".

  Chen Chen wordlessly memorized this rule and he gave up on that stylish, high-end visual motion chair. He copied the movie again and went straight to the opening scene.

  In this scene, the male protagonist, Wade, was wearing the game devices.

  The haptic gloves and omnidirectional treadmill did not have much technological value and were automatically disregarded by Chen Chen. What he was observing was the VR headset that Wade was wearing.

  The VR headset was different from the chair. It was the size of his palm and the USB drive should have enough energy.

  With this in mind, Chen Chen paused the image at the opening scene while reaching out with his left hand, brushing against the VR headset.

  It was that familiar touch again. Chen Chen's left hand seemed to penetrate space, reaching into the existence of a different world.

  Chen Chen clenched his jaw, grabbed the item, and pulled it out vigorously!

  "Ding!"

  The movie automatically shut down once again!

  At the same time, a strange headset had appeared in Chen Chen's hand.

  The headset was mostly white with white and red cartoon words emblazoned across it. It was also affixed with an elastic band to help secure the headset on one's head.

  At the center of the headset was a strip of black lens.

  Although it was called a lens, a user could not see through it. Rather, its function was to project a full range of images onto the user's retinas through the principle of projection, thus forming an omnidirectional visual effect that created an unparalleled sense of reality.

  As he looked at the VR headset in his hands, Chen Chen sighed in relief inwardly.

  At this point, he was not worried that the USB drive would not instantiate something. Instead, he was afraid that he would be too slow in retracting his hand and the USB drive would sever his fingers.

  'Looks like I'll have to find a way to manufacture a mechanical arm to extract items for me…'

  Chen Chen thought to himself silently and glanced back at the USB drive.

  After he had instantiated the VR headset, the USB drive looked tattered and worn out once more.

  The energy within the USB drive had been depleted once more.

  Chapter 32: Settling Down |

  If this VR headset was merely a hardware device used to connect to the Oasis server, it would not have Oasis' client code.

  However, Chen Chen remembered from the movie that the protagonist once used voice control to reconnect the VR headset to the server when the connection was interrupted. This meant that the headset was not just a hardware device for the game but a fully functional smart machine.

  It was just like modern cell phones.

  Cell phones could be used to play games but their functionality was by no means limited to gameplay.

  Now, Chen Chen connected the VR headset to his laptop through the USB port.

  This must be due to the real world being caught up in war all year round, which caused the stagnation of technological development. Therefore, the protocol specifications of the VR headset's USB had not changed and both devices could be linked.

  After Chen Chen had connected them, he immediately started up the program, only to find that the VR headset had no other software except for the client of the Oasis game.

  Chen Chen furrowed his brow but was not discouraged. He used "Show in Finder" to display the contents of the client's file.

  After opening the client's folder, Chen Chen was greeted with a sea of resource files and startup icons as well as files with no visible extension.

  Those must be the Mach-O files generated after the code was compiled.

  These files were hundreds of gigabytes in size.

  Of course, considering the complexity of Oasis in the movie, this was pretty much what he had expected. This was already rather simplified.

  In the past three months, Chen Chen had learned a great deal about computer technology. Now, all his knowledge was coming in handy.

  First, Chen Chen searched for several of the most powerful unpacking software and tried unpacking these files. However, none of the software succeeded.

  The encryption technology of Oasis was very powerful.

  After a while, the work efficiency of Chen Chen's laptop was critically slowed down because the files were too large.

  At the moment, there were only two days left before the three-month period was over.

  Therefore, Chen Chen chose to put away his laptop, pack his suitcase, and left the factory after a last chat with the manager.

  After he left, Chen Chen did not laze around but rushed around before finally locating a remote warehouse near the coastal area in the outskirts.

  "This was originally built by a small fishing company. Later, the government found that this company was fishing offshore and issued a fine of several million, which bankrupted the company."

  Currently, Chen Chen and the agent, who had contacted the warehouse, arrived by car.

  After getting down, the agent handed Chen Chen a cigarette, which Chen Chen waved away.

  Seeing that Chen Chen did not smoke, the agent lit one himself and pointed to the warehouse. "After bankruptcy, the boss still wanted to use this warehouse as collateral but who would've the time and money to maintain this run-down place? So, the warehouse has been abandoned since then."

  Chen Chen walked to the locked roller shutter door of the warehouse and knelt, feeling the ground. The layer of dust was thick – no one had been here for a long time.

  "I'll open the door." The agent came over and took out a bunch of keys, trying them one by one. At last, he managed to lift the door to the height of half a person.

  Both of them bent over and entered the warehouse. The space inside was around two hundred square meters, which was considered a small warehouse. Even so, it had been well cleaned. Other than the dust on the floor and a pile of logs in one corner, there was no other visible junk.

  However, as it had been used to dry saltwater fish over the years, a barely noticeable fishy odor still pervaded the warehouse.

  Chen Chen looked up and observed that the warehouse's roof was constructed with common steel tiles. It was around six or seven meters above the ground. Sunlight filtered in through gaps on the side, scattering bright spots over the gloom of the warehouse.

  "This needs to be repainted."

  As he stared at the mildew that had spread over the wall, Chen Chen could not help frowning.

  "That couldn't be any simpler. I'll hire three or four workers and get it done in two days."

  The agent said offhandedly, "If you wish to rent this place, I'll send them over once I get back."

  Chen Chen did not reply but took the key from the agent to open the backdoor. Then, he circled the entire warehouse.

  "The location is rather remote but the price is low."

  The agent felt awkward and tried to fill the silence. "I heard that there was a murder in the woods behind. So
me years ago, a young woman from a nearby village ran out after a quarrel with her husband. Her family looked for her through the night but found nothing.

  "After they reported her disappearance to the police the next day, the police finally found her body in those woods. Subsequently, people started saying that this place was haunted, hahahaha!"

  "…"

  Chen Chen glanced at the agent with an unreadable expression and the agent's smile froze. "Ugh, I'm such a blabbermouth. Why don't we look at another warehouse – there are a few more vacant ones for rent…"

  "Nope. This is fine."

  Chen Chen walked to the somewhat rusted shutter door and patted it lightly. "Just hire a few workers to clean up this place. I'll rent it for a year for now."

  "Okay, good!" The agent nodded enthusiastically and started making calls to arrange things.

  Chen Chen chose this warehouse because the location was sufficiently remote. The nearest village and shops were a few kilometers away and one would only have to travel four or five kilometers to reach the coast.

  In movies, kidnappers would usually bring their hostages to a place in the middle of nowhere like this.

  To ordinary people, this area was a deserted, godforsaken breeding ground for evil.

  However, for someone like Chen Chen, this was a prime location that was also accessible. If he exited the back of the warehouse and fled into the woods, not even a few hundred police officers could capture him.

  In critical moments, Chen Chen could even choose to escape through the ocean.

  Of course, Chen Chen was merely planning ahead. If the USB drive was discovered by the Federation, Chen Chen would be captured eventually even if he fled to the ends of the earth.

  While the agent took care of the warehouse's repainting, Chen Chen used the computer skills he learned online to install four desktop computers that cost more than five figures.

  After the warehouse was repainted, Chen Chen moved all his stuff over. In two to three days, Chen Chen's first office was officially ready.

  In this environment that was isolated from the rest of the world, Chen Chen officially took the first step to crack Oasis.

  Chen Chen decided to use dynamic debugging tools to unpack the file manually.

  With the effects of NZT-48, Chen Chen's concentration was laser-focused. At this level of efficiency, he could complete more than a week's workload in one day.

  Boosted by this efficiency, Chen Chen tenaciously spent half a month and finally found the program's actual OEP.

  Following that, Chen Chen used decompilation software to gradually uncover the process of running the program in assembly mode.

  It was a shame that the source code of Oasis could not be changed with the technology of the Earth Federation where Chen Chen was located.

  Even so, this was enough. What Chen Chen needed was an idea. As long as he had a general direction, he was confident he could draw upon this new technology and reconstruct a similar program.

  [ol][li data-annotation-id="ab36ac59-94b3-8972-226f-8968dd1c6438"]Original entry point. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entry_point.[/ol]

  Chapter 33: Little X |

  A month later, in the outskirts of Shangdu next to the coast, a warehouse off the beaten track.

  Chen Chen hit the final key. A progress bar flashed and a compressed package appeared on the computer desktop.

  Chen Chen started up the Android emulator, then installed and ran the compressed package.

  After that, the interface of the emulator flashed and a transparent layer unfurled swiftly, covering the entire screen.

  Having done that, Chen Chen pulled up an English webpage on the emulator. The webpage flickered and dense rows of red Chinese characters appeared between the lines of English.

  It was a translation of the English sentences into Chinese.

  Moreover, the translated text did not contain logical flaws. It simply lacked craft and thus, appeared rather stiff.

  Nonetheless, compared to most translation software, this was much more convenient.

  Then, Chen Chen switched over to the interface of the translation software and went to the options of translation modes. Currently, the default mode was "embedded translation".

  Below this option, there were two other modes of "replacement translation" and "contrastive translation."

  In addition, one could adjust the font and color of the translated text.

  After some thought, Chen Chen selected the replacement translation option, then returned to the English webpage.

  This time, there were no red translated words that appeared between the original lines. Instead, all the English words of the entire webpage had been directly replaced with Chinese characters.

  The astonishing thing was that this change did not disrupt the structure of the webpage at all. It appeared as if this webpage was a Chinese website in the first place.

  After making sure that this software had no problems, Chen Chen sighed in relief. He suddenly spoke to the screen before him, "X, help me add a layer of dynamic protection to the program and convert it into three formats: Android, IOS, and PC. I'll leave the rest to you."

  "Yes, Father."

  Suddenly, a childish voice piped up from the speaker. Without any human control, the computer automatically opened up various software and the liquid cooling case of the main computer started to buzz and revolve!

  If a stranger was watching, they would have yelled in alarm. The four computers linked up with each other, forming a computing cluster. The screen of each computer flashed rapidly as if someone with an incredible reaction time was using the four computers at the same time.

  In no time at all, the computers had quickly finished off a workload that would have taken days or weeks for humans. At the moment, Chen Chen had not even finished washing his face.

  X was a piece of program code that Chen Chen had stripped from the game Oasis.

  Besides its graphics, Oasis also had a large number of NPCs. These NPCs were still considered to be weak artificial intelligence that had no real consciousness. Still, their level of intelligence undoubtedly surpassed all current AI.

  The program derived from this group of NPCs was the main code of this X.

  Through an algorithm similar to, but more complex than, the artificial fish swarm algorithm, the program simulated the neural fluctuations of the human brain. This program could simulate up to eighty percent of human thinking and was even capable of logic.

  In the past, the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, Turing, once defined a concept:

  Let a human and an intelligent machine conduct random questions and exchanges without knowing each other's identity. If more than thirty percent of the human testers did not realize that they were communicating with a computer, this meant that the computer possessed "human intelligence".

  This was called the "Turing Test".

  Obviously, X's intelligence had reached the point where it could easily pass the Turing Test. It was even close to Jarvis from Iron Man.

  Even so, this did not mean that X was an intelligent lifeform because it was essentially still a product of endless programming. It did not have self-awareness or the ability to think like humans.

  To prevent the plot of The Terminator from happening, Chen Chen had placed several restrictions on X.

  These included rules implanted in the core program such as: Any command of Chen Chen's would become the highest order, self-replication was forbidden, no online information was to be received before Chen Chen's authorization, and so on.

  After all, Chen Chen had learned from the mistake of his predecessors. Previously, an artificial intelligence named Tay, released by Microsoft, spent only one day on the internet and it became a racist, Nazi-supporting "bad girl".

  Nevertheless, X and Tay were poles apart. The exchange between Chen Chen and X alone would stun many engineers who had studied computational semantics.

  In general, a voice assistant could com
plete certain tasks within its capability through the user's voice. For instance, a user could access their cellphone's voice assistant and casually command, "Call XXX." The voice assistant would be able to help the user carry out the task of making the phone call.

  However, who had ever seen a user say a magical command like "You're already a mature voice assistant and should learn how to do things yourself. Help me finish off the rest of the work, okay?"

  If the voice assistant truly finished the work, that user would wet his pants in fright.

  By the time Chen Chen had finished washing up, X had completed the work Chen Chen asked of it. Three brand-new compressed packages had been fully encapsulated and were waiting tidily on the desktop.

  "X, what kind of name should I give this software?" Chen Chen suddenly wanted to test X's intelligence once again.

  "Father, as my creator, you should know that I'm not equipped with any creative modules." X sounded a little aggrieved.

  "Alright, in that case, this translation software shall be named Little X Translation Assistant. After all, it's mined from your core intelligence," Chen Chen said after a moment of pondering.

  "Very well, Father." On the computer screen, the three fully encapsulated, compressed packages were automatically renamed to [Little X Translation Assistant].

  "Have they been tested for bugs?" Chen Chen dried his hair while asking.

  "Not at the moment, Father."

  X's childlike voice replied again, "If you wish to perform a new round of improvement, it'll take around 325 hours of testing. Do you want to carry out the testing?"

  "Nah, just send the compressed packages to the mailboxes I've specified."

  Chen Chen thought about it. In any case, the software had its user error window. After it was officially released, many users would naturally send over bug reports. There was no need for him to waste more time on testing.

  "Understood, Father."

  X answered in its innocent voice and opened up a few mailboxes in a multi-line operation. After that, the recently packaged software was sent out.

  Along with the delivered software, a short introduction was attached.