When he first got into the car, Zhou Yu was worried about the driver's reaction. But when he saw clearly what was happening in the driver's seat, he instinctively wanted to open the door and get out immediately.
Of course, the person in the driver's seat is not a dog or a zombie, but a middle-aged male driver sitting on it. It's just that he was in the same situation as the old man, with a fixed expression on his face, sitting there like a puppet. His hands were completely off the steering wheel, and he was watching something on his phone.
Just when Zhou Yu didn't know whether to flee, Li Li got into the car from the door on the other side. She glanced at the driver, then sat back down and started typing something on her phone.
"Li Li, are you sure he has no problem driving?"
"I guarantee there are no traffic police or cameras here. This gentleman can act like a wild horse on the prairie."
"We are being led by wild horses. If the horses run themselves into the cliff, we can't escape, right?"
Li Li put down his phone and glanced at him with a smile.
"Maybe his job in the past was driving, but now his job is just to sit here and exist. I think that's enough."
As soon as she finished speaking, the car started slowly, going straight along the road for a while, and then turning left smoothly. During this time, the driver still kept his hands off the steering wheel.
"...Since it is autonomous driving, there is no need to put a person in the driver's seat as a decoration, right?"
"This is the essence of history." Li Li said, "If you look at it in the long run, most of us don't need to exist. We are unique, but worthless. You make a dollhouse, and in order to complete it, You have to put one or two dolls in. But who to put them in? As long as the basic conditions are acceptable, it doesn't matter who you put them in. Your purpose is just to fill the room. However, if this matter is viewed from the perspective of the dolls, you can't help but endow yourself with Special imagination, thinking that the house is specially prepared for you.”
"You seem to be trying to emphasize that life is meaningless. Didn't you say before that the existence of the middle and lower classes is the cornerstone of society?"
"That is a judgment based on the overall sense, sir." Li Li immediately replied, "Every cell in your body is not irreplaceable. However, all the functional organs composed of it are of great significance to you. Every one of them is not irreplaceable. The existence of cells constitutes the existence of human beings, which is the structure of our society.”
"But one cannot escape death."
He didn't mean to contradict the other party, but he subconsciously blurted out these words.
There was a sense of depression in Li Li's smile. “Technology is constantly advancing,” she is quick to say.
Zhou Yu shook his head.
“What we are conquering is disease,” he said.
The so-called natural death in medicine refers to non-violent death, which conceptually includes "death from illness" and "death from old age". But in the true sense, "death of old age" occurs only a handful of times to humans.
Aging, that is to say, the body reaches its "limit". The fundamental reason is that the number of cell divisions is not infinite. As important organs, the brain and heart have basically lost their ability to divide due to the high degree of functional differentiation of their constituent cells, making these two important organs extremely susceptible to failure. The upper limit of the division of ordinary fibroblasts is about sixty times. In other words, the maximum life span of human beings is around 150 years.
No matter how technology develops, what human science has been able to combat so far is not the termination of cell division caused by the loss of telomere information, but the dangers encountered before reaching this limit, such as bacteria and viruses.
Even some people's hearts and brains start to age early. In the end, it often manifests as "sick death" due to organ failure, rather than "death from old age" in which the body is oxidized to the end. All medicine can do at present is to protect cells before they reach their limit.
If you want to permanently defeat death, you must break through this barrier. Regarding this matter, there are not no ideas. There are cell groups that can divide indefinitely and proliferate and expand indefinitely.
"Mutants" that have lost their meaning as functional parts and constantly drive out and plunder other cells purely for the purpose of self-replication can be independently cultivated in the laboratory for sixty years and still maintain a high degree of activity and division ability. Cells like this that abandon their original responsibilities can achieve immortality at the cellular level as long as they have enough nutrients.
——Yes, those are the so-called cancer cells.
It is a perfect immortality ability for the cell itself, but it also ruthlessly declares the tragic fate of its host. If there were a life whose entire body was composed of cancer cells, it would definitely be an immortal monster whose shape cannot be described.
Therefore, in order to prevent the whole from collapsing, it is necessary to ensure that its constituent elements are limited. The old must give way to the new. Reproduce, kill, reproduce, kill, in order to maintain the dynamic balance of the cycle until the day when the entire environment inevitably ends. This is what death means.
Although I don't know where these chaotic thoughts came from, they naturally emerged from the depths of Zhou Yu's mind. He did not explain all this to Li Li, because the other party's expression proved that she was already familiar with it.
In silence, the taxi slowly stopped on the side of the road. The passenger door opened automatically, and the old man turned his legs and waist again, and walked out straight again.
The two people in the car immediately followed him out. When Zhou Yu saw the community in front of him, he said "Ah" in surprise.
"Is this... Yongning Community?"
The community is located on the same street as the "Disappearing Alley" where the corpse is hidden. Although there are slight differences in the door style, the overall pattern has not changed. Even Zhou Yu, who has only been there a few times, can quickly identify it.
Seeing this familiar place, Zhou Yu thought of Hongye and Cai Ji. Regardless of the red leaves, Cai Ji is already in serious danger.
Although Cai Ji, who was seen in the conflict with Sang Lian, didn't know how he turned into that image, since he fell into the hands of Motian, there must be no hope of survival. The most likely possibility is that, like the monster transformed by Sang Lian, it becomes food for "wild cats".
While following the old man walking in the community, Zhou Yu asked, "Li Li, where have you installed surveillance cameras?"
"Only in Migenzhu City, sir, placing surveillance here is redundant."
"I'm not talking about this. I'm asking, how many cameras have you deployed in Migenzhu City? Which streets are they mainly on?"
Li Li glanced at him.
"Every street in the city, sir. Including the sewers. Unfortunately, due to some unknown factors, my equipment frequently fails. When you have a conflict with the Earth Eaters above ground, my camera on that street The signal transmission was immediately terminated. Because of this, I was forced to use manpower to rush to your location and observe the situation with a telescope."
In other words, she didn't know what happened to Cai Ji, or the creature that used to be Cai Ji.
"...You really act like a control freak. If someone finds out and exposes you, you will be sent to jail directly, right? Also, if it is installed on every street, there will be a total of Hundreds? Thousands? Even if there are so many, you can't possibly see them all, right?"
“That’s why I put a monitor of that size in the studio. And, yeah, even then I don’t have time to check every video regularly. I just number them by area and then group the ones that I think are important. The picture remained in front of the monitor. I would sit in front of it for several hours every midnight."
