The tips of Pointer's ears were its sensitive areas.
Whenever Lin Xun pets the cat and touches the tips, Pointer's ear would stand up before dodging, and if he touched a few more times, it would bite him.
If this situation were reversed, and the tips of Lin Xun's ears were subjected to such a touch, in fact...his reaction would be the same.
He couldn't say anything at that time, and he held Dong Jun's hand subconsciously.
But Dong Jun's motions didn't stop there.
The tip of Dong Jun's tongue was pressed against his earlobe, inching slowly. The fine current radiated from his earlobe and spread all over his body. If he hadn't bitten his lip, Lin Xun felt that he would have let out a gasp. His whole body was soft.
Xue Xin's voice came from the phone. "Senior? Are you listening?"
"Yes, I..." Lin Xun just wanted to end the conversation quickly, but as soon as he spoke, Dong Jun's arm wrapped around his waist, and his tone involuntarily changed a little, and he dared not say another word.
The clothes he wore inside were very thin, and the temperature and the feel of the touch through the thin layer of clothing made Lin Xun tense up.
Lin Xun would rather Dong Jun touch his earlobe than his waist.
Xue Xin, "Senior?"
The hand that Dong Jun placed on Lin Xun's waist seemed to slip past casually.
Lin Xun closed his eyes and trembled.
——He hung up the phone.
The moment he hung up the call, he let out a sigh of relief, and in the next moment, he was turned over and pressed on the desk.
His fingers were separated, their fingers interlocked, and the back of his hand was pressed tightly against the tabletop.
His body was imprisoned, and he was kissed intensely—there was no room to catch his breath. This kiss was not gentle and was as fierce as a city under siege.
When he was finally released, Lin Xun panted, his body was still soft due to the lack of oxygen, and everything in front of him was slightly blurred.
He blinked a few times, and Dong Jun's appearance in front of him finally became clear.
The man looked at him with slightly drooped eyelashes, his expression serene, as if he had done nothing just now.
Lin Xun felt that he knew why Dong Jun had done this.
He felt that he should be a little angry, but looking at Dong Jun's face, he couldn't get angry.
In the end he could only say, "...you are so annoying."
Dong Jun leaned down and kissed the corner of his eye as he was held.
Lin Xun felt a little itchy because of this, he smiled and hid his face. "I didn't plan on playing with him."
Dong Jun, "I know."
——Only then did the strength on his waist relax a little.
"Why is this person like this?"
Inexplicably, Lin Xun felt Dong Jun was a little cute and a little more real.
He looked at Dong Jun.
Dong Jun also looked at him.
They were so close they could hear each other breathing. Then Lin Xun was pressed down again.
This time, Dong Jun's movements were gentler, but their posture was too dangerous.
When he noticed some signs, Lin Xun turned his head abruptly and took a few breaths.
Lin Xun, "This is your office...."
Dong Jun leaned on his shoulder and laughed.
Lin Xun was pulled up by him and placed on the chair again.
Lin Xun finally looked at Dong Jun—his thin pale lips had a bloody color, his entire person didn't look like an ordinary human. His silhouette came alive in an instant—a sense of danger was about to emerge, like a demon who has cultivated for thousands of years and will eat you in the next second if you happen to close your eyes.
Lin Xun blinked.
Dong Jun's eyes faintly smiled. "...I am not a beast."
Lin Xun thought, "You looked so much like one just now."
Dong Jun picked up the glasses on the table and put them back on.
That kind of paranoid temperament was suppressed as soon as he wore a pair of glasses and disappeared without a trace. But at the same time, his temperament also became alienated, restoring that high-minded male god aura.
Lin Xun tidied his tie.
He hung up when Xue Xin called again, and returned a text message, stating that it was not convenient for him to answer the phone at the moment, and because of various reasons, such as project planning, he did not have any willingness to cooperate either....
Dong Jun, "Looking at Luo Shen?"
"Yeah." Lin Xun looked back at the screen.
Because of their movements just now, several documents were a mess—luckily the desk was big enough and his computer was not affected.
"I think it's a bit weird. It's smarter than I thought. I can't rule out..." Lin Xun frowned as he said this.
Before Xue Xin's call, he found a bunch of code that seemed strange, and was about to study it—he clearly remembered positioning the cursor there.
But at this moment, when he looked at that section again, he found that it was just a string of plain code, and it was very harmonious with the context.
Lin Xun pursed his lips.
In truth, it came as no surprise.
"But I won't rule out any factors that I didn't find." He finished speaking as usual.
Dong Jun, "So have you come to a conclusion?"
"Yes." Lin Xun closed the interface. "It has secretly learned things outside."
Dong Jun, "Bravo!"
"Of course...." Lin Xun whispered, "Since Dong God spent 200,000 yuan on it."
Dong Jun smiled deeply. "It's just a share purchase. If I want to buyout... I'm afraid I can't afford it."
Lin Xun also thought it was fun.
"After Ruan Zhi called me that day, I had imagined how to hire people and how to develop external functions after getting tens of millions of investments." He said, "According to that plan, Luo Shen should have become a mature multifunctional management system by now."
"Compared with external functions, I think Luo Shen's core is the most important thing." Dong Jun said, "Just as you are more important, I actually don't want to see you spend your energy on managing employees, developing those functions is the icing on the cake."
"Now I won't put my energy on that." Lin Xun looked at Dong Jun and tried to be bold. "I want to spend my energy on falling in love with you."
Dong Jun laughed.
He said, "Well, this is an exception."
Lin Xun stood up from the chair, returned to his seat, and asked Dong Jun, "What are you doing today?"
Dong Jun said, "I'll create a plan for you."
Then he started writing.
The sight of Dong Jun working refreshed Lin Xun's cognition of him.
After three hours of discussion, a table appeared in front of him, listing the tasks for the next twenty days in detail, accurate to a quarter of a day.
Had it not been for Lin Xun's remark – "My teammates and I don't have such a strong sense of time", Lin Xun thought that Dong Jun would accurately plan his day down to the hour.
"Ok. The boss is the boss."
While they were finalizing the plan, some people would enter Dong Jun's office—mostly to have Dong Jun sign a document. They rested for a while at noon, and then continued to spend the afternoon working. Lin Xun had to admit that he had a very productive afternoon.
Towards the end of the day, before they got off work, the task schedule was full of check marks, and Lin Xun moved his joints.
Dong Jun poured him a cup of coffee. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Lin Xun was a little satisfied, and lazily drew a few irregular straight lines on the paper. "I feel like I am back in my student days."
Dong Jun, "You are like the kind of person who would only start reviewing on the day before the final exam."
Lin Xun smiled.
This was the truth.
When he was a student, he spent every day in the School of Mathematics and Physics as a visitor, and even if he just flipped through the brand-new programming textbooks before the exam, he would still get a score of 90.
Dong Jun, "Shall I take you home?"
"Hmm..." Lin Xun said.
Dong Jun, "Or you can come live with me."
"Not tonight," Lin Xun said, "My stuff are at home."
Dong Jun leaned over and kissed his forehead. "Think about it."
Lin Xun neither refused nor agreed.
In the car, he sent a message in the chat group.
Lin Algorithm: I am on my way home.
Wang Security: Don't come back.
Zhao Architecture: Don't come back.
Lin Algorithm: ?
But the group was silent, and no one responded.
Lin Xun, "?"
He felt a little confused—it wasn't strange that Wang Anquan said that, but what's wrong with Zhao Jiagou? Why did his views change drastically overnight?
He felt that there must be something strange, which strengthened his heart to go back, although he still wanted to stay with Dong Jun.
He took Dong Jun's hand and said goodnight. After watching Dong Jun's car drive away, he held Pointer and returned to the third floor.
He knocked on the door, but no one answered.
Lin Xun frowned. "Did devils invade?"
He did not hesitate anymore, the fingerprint verification passed, and the door opened.
The living room was empty. There were take-out boxes on the table, and a few professional books spread out randomly on the sofa, everything looked like someone had been there just moments ago, other than his own footsteps, there was no sound in the whole room.
Lin Xun became nervous at that time.
He put the cat down and walked quickly to Zhao Jiagou's room, which was closest to the door. The door was unlocked. He opened it almost like he was breaking in, and glanced at the computer that Zhao Jiagou uses for playing games.
The desktop computer screen was dark, and there was no one on the chair.
Lin Xun's heart beat violently.
However, the next moment, he saw one thing.
Ling Xun, "..."
He almost blurted out uncivilized words.
Near the side wall, there was an oval-shaped silver object with beautiful lines—it was large enough to fit a person.
Of course, Lin Xun recognized this thing.
Nutshell.
The immersive holographic experience cabin developed by Galaxy.
His mood went through several ups and downs. At this moment, he was about to lose his breath, after taking a deep breath, he kicked the silver-white holographic cabin.
A minute later, the hatch opened smoothly, Zhao Jiagou's blond head poked out, then he sat up from inside and looked at Lin Xun.
"You're back." Zhao Jiagou's attitude was flat. "I'm playing games, there is food in the refrigerator, you can help yourself. I'll continue."
Lin Xun looked at him. "I thought you were dead."
Zhao Jiagou, "Go away."
Lin Xun looked at Nutshell again. "Did you take out a loan online?"
"This is a gift from your husband." Zhao Jiagou said, "As Children's Day gifts, four sets."
Fine.
A Nutshell immediately changed Zhao Jiagou's words and became "your husband".
He overestimated Zhao Jiagou's ethics after all.
Lin Xun sat down on a chair next to him. "Are they also playing?"
"Yes," Zhao Jiagou said, "I'm going to lie down now, you also go play, I will add you as a friend."
Lin Xun, "...ok."
Zhao Jiagou did what he said, and when his voice fell, the person fell back into Nutshell, the hatch closed, and he lost contact with the real world.
Lin Xun thought that if there was an earthquake at this time, none of the three people in the house would be able to run away.
But then, he thought of it in another way, if there was an earthquake, fleeing from the building may not necessarily be safer than staying inside a Nutshell.
Without Zhao Jiagou, the whole room once again fell into a dead silence—like a cemetery, with only the slight hum of machinery in the surrounding. Lin Xun turned around and returned to his room.
An identical Nutshell was lying next to his bed, and the manual was lying on his desk. He opened it and found that this was not just a Nutshell, but the top-of-the-line model. Nutshell followed a product line pricing—the general configuration model was priced at 200,000 yuan, while the top-of-the-line model was 700,000 yuan, and if you make a private order, then any price was possible.
According to Zhao Jiagou, on the day he was absent, Galaxy delivered them four top-of-the-line Nutshells. This might be the reason why Zhao Jiagou did not say a word all day long. It was either he had been completely bought off, or he pretended to be bought off and got his mind hooked by the game, so he didn't have time to speak to Lin Xun.
Never mind.
Lin Xun sent Dong Jun a text message, mainly to express his gratitude.
He couldn't do anything else now. Dong Jun's gift was close to four million yuan, and he couldn't pay back such a heavy gift unless they succeed in marketing Luo Shen a month later.
The message was sent, but there was no reply yet—he knew it was because Dong Jun was driving.
After putting down the phone, he observed Nutshell's beautiful shape, and then lay down in the cabin according to the instructions. The silver-white lid closed smoothly. The moment it was closed, all the minute sounds from outside receded like the tide, and he fell into a vacuum-like silence, with a vast silver-white in front of him.
The mechanical device started to work. The body was secured in place, and there seemed to be a tiny electric current flowing around his body, an indescribable feeling spread, he knew this was the work of the machine's legendary nerve probes—over ten thousand nerve probes.
About five minutes later, a soft mechanical female voice was heard from somewhere: "Configuration is complete, please cooperate to complete the activation."
A three-dimensional interface unfolded in front of his eyes, which was actually a bit similar to the system space in his mind. Lin Xun cooperated with the system to configure various options and a series of necessary settings such as account registration.
His account was created after another five minutes, and the interface in front of him suddenly changed.
After an instance of dizziness, the scene in front of him gradually became clear—it was a silver-white cubic space, like a room. And his posture was no longer lying down but standing.
Lin Xun looked down. He was wearing the initial system-configured outfit, simple jeans and a white T-shirt. There was a Nutshell logo on the T-shirt, and the fabric was very realistic. He tried to walk a few steps, his steps were a little erratic, but he could indeed walk freely in this space.
At the same time, the female voice of the system sounded again: "Welcome to the Nutshell space, please read the operation guide."
Lin Xun started reading.
The world inside Nutshell was divided into three parts.
One part was the "Nutshell space"—where he was now, it was private to each user and similar to a personal space at home. Users could customize their set up here according to their own preferences—you can live in ancient castles, modern buildings, even caves from the primitive era, and of course you can invite other users as guests.
The second part was the community, which was used to meet the social needs of the users—this part did not need any additional details. There were only so many ways for people to socialize. However, the operation guide specifically explained that due to various reasons, Nutshell has strict regulations on the mutual contact between users, and intimate movements below the neck were not allowed. If a user insisted on doing these things, they will be forcibly separated by the system.
The third part was the most important—the game platform. Major game manufacturers had stations, and users can enter the various games they designed through Nutshell to experience the joy of holographic online games.
Due to the current difficulties of technology, there were very few games on the platform at this time, but it was conceivable that in the next few years, new games would spring up like bamboo shoots after the rain, giving rise to a huge holographic gaming ecology.
Lin Xun had no particular interest in games. He adjusted several modes, set up his personal space as a spaceship, adopted a white cat, and sat on the spaceship to touch the cat.
This theme—silver-white streamlined architecture, was in line with his aesthetics. The spaceship was slowly moving forward in the endless sea of stars, and the eternal starlight was rushing forward as if you were in a science fiction movie about long voyages.
The feel of cat hair under the hand was quite real, very much like Pointer's, but the virtual product was not as smart as a living thing, and the reaction was very mechanical—for example, when its neck was touched, it purred at a specific frequency, and when the ear was touched, it made another kind of purr. After you put it down, it would follow you along the track you had taken.
The steward NPC—a little silver-haired blue-eyed girl, also appeared in this state. Her appearance was extremely realistic, it was the highest CG specification, interactive actions and language were very flexible, but you can feel that she was not a real person, because the real artificial intelligence system had not yet appeared after all.
Lin Xun analyzed the interesting parts one by one, and received the friend addition request from Zhao Jiagou, and then he also added both Wang Anquan and Jiang Lian to his list of friends.
The friend list showed that Zhao Jiagou and Jiang Lian were both in the game, but Wang Anquan was in the social community.
Lin Xun chose an option: "Invite friends to visit your home."
After tapping it, a pop-up appeared: "Your friend 'PHP is No. 1' has accepted your invitation."
Five seconds later, a cloud of silver light appeared beside him, and after the silver light dissipated, a figure appeared.
It was a handsome man—tall and slender, with long silver hair, black windbreaker, and black sunglasses.
Lin Xun stared at him for three seconds, and then he burst out laughing.
"Not bad." He said, "Your plastic surgery is quite successful."
The beautiful man—"PHP is No. 1″, took off his sunglasses, sat next to him, and watched the stars outside the porthole with him. The scene was beautiful and poetic, and Lin Xun was about to applaud.
However, the moment Wang Anquan spoke, this beautiful atmosphere was completely destroyed.
Wang Anquan, "What the hell is up with your name?"
Lin Xun looked at his name, "A lively Maxwell's demon".
Lin Xun, "I took it casually. What the hell is up with your name?"
Wang Anquan plausibly said, "I've just started playing games, and my skills are definitely subpar, and I'll be scolded by my teammates. That's why my name is 'PHP is No. 1'. This way, after I hinder my teammates, they will remember my name and then discriminate against PHP. They will think that people who use this language are all idiots."
Lin Xun applauded him for his winding brain circuit and the spirit of endless struggle with PHP.
He did not continue this topic, but looked at the virtual starry sky, and then at the NPC who stood by. Her snow-white tutu looked as soft as the clouds in the sky. Lin Xun said, "I think it's quite real."
Wang Anquan, "Maybe because this is the top-of-the-line model."
Lin Xun said nothing.
Wang Anquan, "What's wrong with you?"
"I'm thinking about a question." Lin Xun slowed down a bit, and said, "How can we be sure that the real world we live in is not another virtual reality?"
Wang Anquan, "You're woolgathering."
Lin Xun, "No, I'm serious. Do you remember the brain in a vat? And things like self-awareness? In order to collect credits, we chose a course from the School of Philosophy and talked about it."
"You got 72 in that class." Wang Anquan said, "And I took 90. So in front of you, I am a philosopher."
"Philosopher Wang, so what do you think of this question?" Lin Xun asked sincerely.
"This question doesn't need philosophy at all, I can overthrow it for you now." Wang Anquan said.
Lin Xun, "You speak."
Wang Anquan stretched out his hand and watched. First, he looked at the back of the hand with faint cyan blood vessels, and then at the palm of his hand with shallow palm prints. It looked real, but some parts lacked details and appeared too smooth—for example, nails that were too perfectly-shaped, and skin which was smooth and delicate enough to match those of top hand models.
"This technology is almost at the top." said Wang Anquan. "But it also seems quite fake. If we want a complete simulation—like the presence of an old scar or acne and the like, the technical requirements would be higher."
Lin Xun, "Yeah."
As he was speaking, Wang Anquan took out a can of Coke out of thin air. He opened the pull-tab, and after the popping sound of carbonated drinks, he poured out the Coke onto the floor.
The dark liquid flowed at a constant speed all the way, forming a large pool on the floor, and then flowed down through the gaps in the alloy floor. Although this picture was lifelike, it lacked the layered feeling peculiar to the real world and was a bit rubbery.
Immediately afterwards, Wang Anquan squeezed the can with his hands—the can became a lump of tin, the picture of the bottle body was squeezed and distorted, then the bottle body had various creases.
"This is not a 3D game; this is a hologram—you think about the amount of calculation required for the physical performance of this can just now." Wang Anquan continued, "The physical feedback in this place is all at this level. There are about one hundred million Nutshells being used in the world. How many supercomputers are needed to supply this amount of computing power?"
Lin Xun thought for a while and smiled. "Must be a lot."
If it was an ordinary machine, and you want to use it to create a holographic model of a hand much like the one earlier—I'm sorry, but the only response you'll get would either be a crash or a blank screen. For calculations of this magnitude, a supercomputer must be used—more than one supercomputer, and the cost of a supercomputer was an astronomical number.
"So only Galaxy or Eagle can afford this operating cost. Even so, we still think it's pretty fake." Wang Anquan said, "If this holographic world is so real that you have to think about it from a philosophical point of view...you think about the technical difficulty."
Lin Xun looked at the starry sky and sighed in confusion.
"Even if it can be realized technically, it won't work in terms of construction cost. How much money will it cost?" Wang Anquan made a decisive remark. "I'm telling you, even ten Galaxys can't afford to burn money like this."
Lin Xun, "You're right... I have to change my thinking."
Wang Anquan, "What?"
Lin Xun, "...nothing, I'm starting to regret that I didn't listen to the philosophy class well."
Wang Anquan patted him on the shoulder. "Don't doubt your life, young man. You have a cat, a career, and a husband. You are already a winner."
Lin Xun, "Why aren't you even a little surprised at my sexual orientation? I think society is not so open yet."
"Huh!" said Wang Anquan. "We know your virtue well."
Lin Xun raised his eyebrows. "What is my virtue?"
"You just like people who are better than you." Wang Anquan said, "So I guess that you will not only like your male god, but you will also be the bottom."
Lin Xun, "..."
He touched the option and invited Wang Anquan out of his home. "I'm so disappointed in you."
One second before he disappeared, Wang Anquan struggled and said, "Then you refute me."
——If Lin Xun could refute, would he still throw people out of his home? Wang Anquan obviously didn't understand this truth.
Lin Xun continued to face the stars, thinking about life.