Chapter 324: The Young Girl (Part 2)

Chapter 324: Chapter 10: The Young Girl (Part 2)

Like characters created by players in an online game, would they grow old? Would they truly die?

Obviously not.

Data was data. How could it possibly grow old?

So, he had assumed that everyone here was frozen at the age they were when they underwent the Consciousness Upload procedure in 2028. Whatever state they were in when their consciousness and memories were extracted was how they would remain, now and forever. They wouldn’t age, and they wouldn’t die.

By that logic, the little child he had just seen running with a lollipop must have been that exact age back in 2028.

‘But from what this girl was saying, not only could the Digital Lives in this Virtual World grow up, get old, fall ill, and die… but new life could also, bafflingly, be born?’

‘He couldn’t comprehend the situation at all.’

‘And from a biological perspective, it was impossible to say… these brand-new Digital Lives born in the Virtual World, did they truly possess independent consciousness? Could they still be considered human in the traditional sense?’

“Pardon my asking, but how old are you?”

“Me? I’m sixteen!”

“Then… aren’t you a child laborer?”

Jiang Ran didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It seemed the relevant laws had also changed in this Virtual World.

Pfft—

The girl burst out laughing, covering her mouth as she shook with amusement.

“Hahaha, child laborer! I haven’t heard that term in ages! I’m already sixteen, how could I possibly be a child laborer?”

“The law says you can start working after you graduate from university at age twelve, so my job is totally legal, you know!”

‘Graduating from university at twelve… What an alien concept.’

Jiang Ran felt like a country bumpkin in the big city, completely out of his depth.

“You can graduate from university at twelve? Is it because you learn things very quickly in this Virtual World?”

“Yep.”

The girl gave Jiang Ran a slightly odd look but patiently explained anyway.

“Have you never been to school? That can’t be right… Education is mandatory in every country in the world…”

“Besides, school is fun! Whatever you want to learn just goes straight into your brain. It takes no effort at all.”

She lifted her head, gazing at the distant skyscrapers piercing the clouds.

“My mom and dad often tell me that on Earth, where they used to live, studying was painful, life was exhausting, and the pressure was immense…”

“I can’t understand that at all, because in the Digital World, everything is so simple~”

“See those skyscrapers? My dad said he used to be a construction worker, and he told me that humans could never build something that tall. But in the Digital World, as long as the plans get approved, a skyscraper that high can be built in just a few days.”

“After all, we have ‘Process Acceleration Technology’ here. As long as something is approved, its progress can be accelerated.”

“It’s like that question you just asked… Actually, my dad used to miss life on the outside a lot, but he’s stopped saying things like that in recent years. He feels that life here is truly wonderful and happy.”

“He told me that back when he worked on construction sites, he’d have to climb up and down scaffolding under the blazing sun until his skin peeled, and his wages were often withheld.”

“But ever since coming to the Digital World, he’s been happy and relaxed every single day, completely free of pressure. We were talking about it not long ago, and he told me that even if he had to choose ten thousand times over, he’d still choose to live in the Digital World.”

“My mom’s the same. She told me that before coming to the Digital World, she had a very serious form of cancer and was basically in the hospital just waiting to die. But after she arrived here, her cancer was cured in an instant, and now she’s perfectly healthy.”

“So she loves it here, too. She says the Digital World gave her a new life, allowed her to meet my dad, and then have me, giving her the happy life she has now.”

…

Listening to the girl’s endless praise, Jiang Ran truly began to understand that for the common people, for the poor and suffering, the Virtual World was indeed a blissful haven.

Here, there was no pressure to survive. Resources were infinite, so there were no conflicts over distribution.

Here, there was no sickness or disaster, because everything was data. Even a malignant tumor could be dealt with by simply selecting it and hitting ‘delete’.

Here, there was no grueling 9-to-9, six-day work week, no endless stream of deliveries to make, no mortgages you couldn’t pay off. In the real world, most people wouldn’t dare to dream of such a life.

Without a doubt, for most people, the Virtual World was a perfect, flawless Utopia.

In the real world Jiang Ran came from, many literary works loved to criticize the idea of a Utopian World, depicting them through various creative lenses as flashy but impractical, beautiful on the surface but rotten to the core.

But…

If such a beautiful Utopia were truly presented to them, how many people could actually refuse?

He suddenly recalled a famous company in the Henan region called Pang Donglai.

Their standards of hygiene were absurdly high. Not only was every nook and cranny of the floor spotless, but even the wheels on their delivery trucks were polished to a brilliant shine.

At the time, many people online criticized them, saying such an exaggerated level of cleanliness was completely unnecessary and an exploitation of the cleaning staff. They all expressed sympathy for the intense workload the cleaners must have had.

But soon, someone else commented… ‘Please, spare us your meaningless sympathy. In a fourth-tier city like this, a cleaner can take home 9,000 yuan a month after all deductions. Their biggest daily headache is figuring out how to get the place even cleaner, and cleaner, and cleaner still, just to feel like they’re earning their high salary.’