"I would have liked to talk about this later."
Faced with this situation, Li Li spoke unusually calmly. She immediately put the coffee cup on the ground, walked quickly to the sink, and rinsed the burned area on her hands with cold water.
Zhou Yu followed her and asked, "What's going on?"
"A disease with an unknown mode of transmission." Li Li said without raising his head. "First, the patient will gradually lose the sense of hot and cold, and then it will expand to the entire pain, causing some kind of mutation in the nerves... I still have the subsequent symptoms. I don’t know. I’m far from that stage.”
Zhou Yu listened to her words, but Zhang Mumu's appearance appeared in his mind. He said a little anxiously: "This is not a disease. There was a girl who jumped off the building before she died..."
"Almost all of the deceased women had it at some point in their lives, if that's what you mean."
Li Li turned off the faucet, turned to look at him and said: "Although this phenomenon is as confusing as witchcraft, it is still a strange disease. In all the body tissues of the deceased that I can collect, I can find completely The same protein structural abnormalities and neurotic changes. And my own infection allowed me to watch the evolution of the disease from its earliest stages."
Zhou Yu frowned. Even though Li Li claimed that he was engaged in medicine, these statements still sounded strange to him.
"Our body sense is a very complex system, Mr. Zhou Yu. When we touch the surface of the table, we actually obtain a series of information such as temperature, hardness, smoothness, and our own contact parts at the same time. These The work is completed by independent receivers. For example, we usually think that the main receiver of heat sensation is the protein TRPV1. When the ambient temperature exceeds 42 degrees, it releases an electrical signal to the nerves, causing the brain to feel pain. This is what we You will feel the 'hot' principle."
She raised her burned hand, grasped it twice slowly, and then said: "Congenital painlessness that exists in medicine is generally considered to be an abnormality in the structure of the protein NAV.17 or NAV.19, which cannot produce and transmit electricity normally. signal. The root cause of this abnormality comes from the mutation of its control gene. In other words, this is a congenital recessive genetic disease. Patients do not have the ability to feel pain from birth. Unfortunately, our existing Gene editing technology is difficult to modify the human body. Once a baby with analgesia is born from the mother's body, he will be accompanied by the threat of analgesia for life. What's interesting is that before entering here, I was at the genetic level He is completely healthy and does not show any mutations that are different from ordinary people. And until now, I have been unable to find any problems through genetic testing. Mr. Zhou Yu, it is like overnight, the protein cold and heat receptors in my body All stopped functioning. Their structures did not deform, but when the environment reached the critical temperature where they should be activated, they seemed frozen and unresponsive. I have an even more unpleasant guess, Mr. Zhou Yu, I think These protein structures look forward to my death."
After listening to her description, Zhou Yu didn't know what to say. In the end he could only shake his head slowly: "Proteins have no consciousness."
"This is a topic closer to philosophy, Mr. Zhou Yu." Li Li said, "What standards do we use to judge individual lives? Generally speaking, when a person cuts off a hand, he will never treat that hand The severed hand is regarded as 'self'. Even if we use some kind of medical means to maintain the activity of that palm, obviously conceptually we still regard the severed part of the hand as a person. However, if a person loses most of his body, only his brain It is placed in a tank to survive, but we feel that the isolated organ is the 'living' part."
Because the fact that Li Li was ill was still digesting in his mind, Zhou Yu had no intention of talking about such a topic that was out of touch with reality. He blurted out a little anxiously: "The brain is the thinking center of human beings and the most important organ in the entire body. As long as the brain is alive, other parts are just replaceable parts. Is there anything strange about using it as a sign of survival? "
Li Li just held his hands contentedly.
"I'm glad to hear your opinion, Mr. Zhou Yu. However, I must point out that the organ in our body that makes the judgment that 'the brain is the most important' is unfair in its position. It is a vote for itself. Adjudicator."
Zhou Yu smiled a little inexplicably: "Isn't the brain just ourselves?"
"Good question, but which part? Brain nucleus? Brain limbus? Cortex? The brain is just a chemical reaction organ assembled from many parts. Apart from the complexity of the structure, it is no different from other parts of our body. Just because it is the integration center of data makes us treat it differently. We tend to believe that we are a whole, the smallest unit of life that cannot be divided anymore. But in fact, even a single cell has The basic characteristics of life, we are much larger than a basic unit."
"I don't understand the purpose of what you said." Zhou Yu finally said straightforwardly, "If your disease is caused by protein receptors, then the disease has nothing to do with brain tissue. This kind of genetic disease involving genes is not yet known at this stage. It cannot be cured, so you should take precautions..."
Li Li shook his head. When they first met her, Zhou Yu felt that her complexion was not good. But now, whether it was because of the pale and bright light or the psychological effect of knowing her condition, Li Li's face looked as dull as if he was about to die.
"This is the key to everything, Mr. Zhou Yu."
She said softly in a voice with a certain sadness: "What if our individual consciousness is an illusion? We are just a mobile factory composed of a large group of cellular organisms. Usually they live and die together and cooperate to survive. However, In rare cases, they fight independently, and even try to kill other aliens, until finally, the victorious species - which may just be a specific type of digestive enzyme, or a protein - takes its original position in the brain. It no longer requires redundant data exchange, as long as the simplest principles of action are instilled... I know this may sound like nonsense, but this is the most reasonable conclusion at present. When I found After I contracted this heat and cold apathy, I spent a long time studying its principles. To this end, I exhausted all the resources at hand. I founded Lunxing to collect equipment and searched the entire city for Suitable researchers, these things are killing me. Even so, the progress of the research is always delayed. I can't say exactly what happens, but it turns out that the employees in charge of the laboratory are always the fastest Those who resigned and stayed were always as depressed as if they were sick, and in the end I had to close the laboratory. Before that, I got some data feedback from the laboratory."
Li Li was quietly lost in thought for a while, seeming to be thinking about how to tell Zhou Yu what he had discovered.
"Laboratory reports show that the protein TRPV1 obtained from my body, as well as a series of other proteins related to sensing cold and heat, all have 'strange anti-experimental properties'. When people try to observe its status, they behave like Ordinary protein structures have the same structure, but as long as the whole process is not under supervision, they become dead and diseased proteins. There are many cases like this where the principle cannot be explained, and only members of the laboratory can fully understand it. . In short, the protein bodies taken out of the body showed some volitional behavior. They actually learned to lie and disguise to avoid research on themselves. The person who came to this conclusion was the experimenter The third person in charge of the room, I am afraid he is still living in a mental sanatorium. "
