1950 “System”
“That was our civilization’s most glorious era,” Zero told Meng Chao.

“With the Creation Engine, our civilization jumped from one galaxy to another, and we expanded from one end to the other. In just a few million years, we expanded to most of the star zones in the known universe, and we gained tens of thousands of habitable planets.

“The uninhabitable planets were once cold, dark, and dead. But following the meteorite impact, reconstruction of their crust, and replication of ecosystems, they became full of vitality and hope.”

However, good times did not last long.

As the scale of a civilization grew larger, the internal conflicts and problems that erupted also increased.

The biggest problem was space and time.

Any life, empire, or civilization itself, no matter how powerful and advanced, had a limit.

The planet at the edge of the galaxy was separated from Civilization’s home planet by a vast sea of stars. As such, the cost of communication kept increasing until it outweighed the benefits. This planet gradually lost its need and respect for the home planet.

In the millions or tens of millions of years that the civilizations developed independently, they became vastly different from each other. Hence, it became increasingly difficult for them to become an “imaginary community” that shared the same breath and fate.

In just ten thousand years, the once glorious Civilization had declined.

Countless new planets raised the flag of rebellion, as they were not willing to follow the lifestyle and moral values that originated from their home planet. They refused to bear their sacred obligations to the huge empire.

Many individuals at Civilization’s core—the elite region that had developed for tens of millions of years—were tired of the perfect but unchanging life. They even lost their passion for life and the universe itself due to their never-ending conquest. They essentially lost the will to live.

Internal and external troubles lasted for several hundred thousand years and led to the first major crisis after the birth of civilization.

Although the rebellion finally died down, the Kindling that led to the division and even destruction of civilizations was still spreading silently in the unpredictable darkness of the boundless universe.

“Zero” was born at this time.

Originally, Zero was just a “crisis prediction system.”

Through the input of massive initial data and the calculations, as well as deductions, of supercomputers day and night, they locked onto the most chaotic, vulnerable planet in the entire civilization. It was most likely the place where the next crisis would break out, so before another rebellion broke out, all dangers were nipped in the bud.

However, with the ancient civilization’s artificial intelligence and supercomputing technology, development became increasingly fast and advanced. The artificial intelligence evolved and continued to upgrade on its own.

Soon, the system could predict more than just danger.

In other words, the system could first calculate most of the dangers in the known universe through the elimination method. After eliminating them one by one, it would deduce the only correct, harmonious, and bright future.

The ancient civilization that had developed for tens of millions of years could no longer generate the motivation to move forward through natural means.

The Future Prediction System that managed and guided the progress of the entire civilization had become the only choice.

In the beginning, the system could only predict the future of a certain structure, a certain galaxy, or a certain planet vaguely.

As data, resources, and energy continued to pour in, the Future Prediction System became more refined and increasingly accurate. Gradually, it could predict the future of a certain city on a certain planet and even a certain citizen in a certain city.

In the end, with the ubiquitous monitoring system, logistics network, and nanochips that were integrated with the brains of carbon-based creatures in several hundred million civilizations, the data from the individuals’ long lives could be uploaded to the network in real time. It would then be summarized in the local Future Prediction Center and then sent to the Future Prediction Headquarters on the home planet through four-dimensional travel.

The Future Prediction Headquarters on the home planet was located deep underground in the crystal mines with the densest spirit energy.

Relying on the almost infinite resources of crystals, the Future Prediction System absorbed tremendous data every second, built virtual models, predicted hundreds, thousands, or even billions of futures, and searched for the best, or at least, the least bad future.

Then, all the data contained in the “least bad future” would be disassembled one by one and divided before being transmitted back to the structures, galaxies, planets, and cities of every civilization. Finally, they would be transmitted back to the nanochip deep in every individual’s brain.

The utilization of this method gave every civilization an extremely powerful “system.”

The system could present images, sound, transmit information, give guidance, and provide meticulous care to civilized individuals at any time.

When necessary, it could even stimulate the nerves and spinal cord to take over a person’s body. This ensured that every action of theirs, including when to eat, when to defecate, and when to reproduce, was “rhythmically correct.” In this way, their existence would be a contribution to their civilization, not its destruction.

There was no doubt about how useful the Future Projection System was.

In the hundreds of thousands of years that followed, Civilization’s development was no longer as unstoppable as it had been in the first few million years.

However, there was no large-scale rebellion on a planetary level.

Even the riots that had spread throughout the cities had become a once-in-a-century event.

A civilization that had just come into contact with the system would have a voice in their head that would ring out constantly. They would also have to obey it completely, and that was certainly not a comfortable thing.
However, countless individuals had shown, at the cost of their lives, that any behavior in defiance of the system would lead to catastrophic or even destructive consequences.

Individuals who were unwilling to obey fell to the bottom of society and would even be destroyed by their own stupidity.

Meanwhile, those who survived were smart individuals that knew how to avoid harm.

As for the new generation of civilizations born after the system went online, the system was like a brain, an eyeball, or heart. It was an organ that they were born with and an inseparable part of their soul.

They never thought of getting rid of the system, just like a normal person with a healthy mind would never be tempted to dig out his own eyes.