Fantasy Game: Infinite City

Chapter 526 The Polluted City (20)

On the third floor of the town hospital, in the backup generator room.

"Om~~"

Using the password on the notebook given by Madison, Adenauer successfully turned on the backup generator. After a brief buzzing sound of electricity, the hospital's power system was quickly restored and all lighting equipment was online. Except for some damaged areas, the entire hospital became bright.

"It's only a little after four in the afternoon, why is it so dark outside? Even if it's because of the heavy rain, it shouldn't be so dark."

"It's really unusual! If we didn't know the time, we would definitely mistake it for midnight. It's too dark!"

Once the hospital's interior was illuminated, the contrast with the outdoors became even more pronounced. Now the entire hospital resembled a beacon, while the town was as dark as the depths of the ocean at midnight. However, due to the torrential rain, the beacon's light couldn't reach very far. This wasn't a problem, however. The frantic townspeople weren't particularly sensitive to light, so the sudden illumination of the hospital didn't attract them.

The team that had entered the hospital earlier had cleaned it up thoroughly, leaving many bodies of townspeople on the ground. As they passed the second floor, they spotted the same large figure from earlier, now riddled with bullets. The three of them squeezed past his body and continued down. After a few minutes, they arrived at the entrance to the morgue on the basement level.

"No life signs detected."

Before arriving at the morgue, Adenauer used the contractor's equipment to conduct an inspection. There were no crazy townspeople in the morgue. This made sense. After all, no matter where else, there would be almost no one staying in the morgue except when storing and retrieving corpses.

The town had few residents, so the death rate was naturally low. Madison had just been here at noon, so he quickly found the body in the cold storage and retrieved it. The body looked normal, with no obvious injuries. Since the body hadn't been examined yet, even Madison didn't know the cause of death.

"Reinforcement equipment detected."

After retrieving the body, the contractor's equipment scanned and detected something. Within the corpse's brain, the hippocampus had been replaced by a synthetic device of the same size and shape. It was a synthetic alloy that mimicked the properties of human tissue and possessed considerable information storage capabilities. Besides replacing the real hippocampus and performing normal human brain functions, the device could also store and retrieve vast amounts of information. To Adenauer, this device wasn't exactly cutting-edge, but it wasn't backward either.

However, in order to rationalize the discovery of this thing, Adenauer carried the body directly and returned to the third floor with the old policemen Juan and Madison, found an operating room, and began a routine examination of the body.

"Now that we've completed the entire body test, the only thing left is the brain. It looks like we'll have to perform a craniotomy. Can you two hold on? If not, you can go out and get some fresh air."

"I am fine."

"I've been a police officer for so many years and have seen a lot of scenes. Naturally, I've also seen a lot of unlucky people who got shot in the head by various circumstances. I don't need that either."

For Madison, it naturally didn't matter, and for the old policeman Juan, he didn't know whether to say he was lucky or unlucky. In his decades of police career, he had seen many bizarre deaths and was used to it.

"That's fine."

The two men had seen craniotomies performed before, so they wisely put on medical masks. But Adenauer seemed completely unconcerned. He grabbed the nearby electric craniotomy saw, found the right angle, and began the operation with ease. However, unlike a typical craniotomy, he chose a different location: a circular incision directly across the skull cap. Then, like opening the lid of a can, he removed the entire skull cap and, using surgical forceps, extracted the entire brain.

The hippocampus is a very obvious structure in the human brain. Under the illumination of the shadowless lamp, the other two people quickly found the location of the hippocampus. Madison, who has a medical background, saw the problem at once. There was obviously something wrong with the material of the hippocampus. Although Juan did not have any medical background, he had sharp eyes and noticed at a glance that there were some things like fine wires on the edge of the hippocampus, so he naturally found something wrong.

"I don't think this thing can be grown in the human brain, even though it looks very similar to a normal hippocampus."

"The human brain can't grow wires, but is it possible to directly replace the brain's structure?"

"Yes, as long as the surgery is fast and precise enough, and external conditions are used to maintain all the patient's necessary life-support systems throughout the operation, then as long as there's no rejection, and the patient just needs to lie down for a while and wait for full recovery, this effect can be achieved. However, compared to this riskier and more expensive replacement surgery, it's easier to use biotechnology to clone a body and implant these things in advance."

"You mean... the identity of this corpse is not his real identity?"

"I can't be 100% sure right now, but common sense suggests that this wouldn't occur in a normal person's brain. I've never heard of a surgery that requires replacing the entire hippocampus, so perhaps the farmer's behavior might be exactly the same as before, but he's definitely not the same farmer."

"Could this guy be a...synth?!"

Veteran policeman Juan recalled the urban legends he'd heard and his own experiences. Then, looking at the hippocampus in Adenauer's hand, he felt his hair stand on end and a shudder run down his spine. Everything told him that the existence of synths wasn't just a rumor or urban legend. If the corpse before him could truly be considered a synth, then he had personally confirmed his fears. After all, a being indistinguishable from a normal human except for its synthetic parts could have likely replaced a significant portion of normal humans, unnoticed. If this situation continued, one day, Juan would begin to wonder if he himself was a synth.

Madison's reaction was much less pronounced than veteran police officer Juan's. After all, she had a strong medical background, and on a biological level, she didn't mind the existence of synthetics. Even if they replaced everyone, it wouldn't be unacceptable to her. However, Madison wasn't completely unrestrained by this. After all, the existence of synthetics raises ethical questions. If a synthetic replaced herself or someone important to her, like her parents, she wouldn't accept it. But other than that, her reaction wasn't strong.

For Adenauer, this wasn't a problem at all. First, his moral standards were weak. Second, he had already seen and known about the existence of synthetics during his previous interactions with the Infinite Company. In reality, synthetic technology was already highly advanced and used in many fields. Furthermore, for special reasons, synthetics were practically no substitute for normal humans.

In real life, the technology behind synthetic humans is so well-known that it's practically undiscussed. Research into synthetic humans began decades ago, sparked by a mad scientist who nearly met her end. As a teenager, she suffered an accident that left her vulnerable to capture by a criminal organization involved in organ trafficking. She sought a way to permanently eradicate this criminal activity. After years of navigating this issue, she arrived at a medical research project banned by major countries: human cloning.

This mad scientist might not have had a normal brain, but her expertise was undeniable. Within five years, she had developed a complete cloning technology, and the first clone she created was herself. However, due to technical issues, she was unable to resolve certain issues concerning the clone's brain. As a result, the first batch of clones she created were incapable of thinking and could be considered brain-dead, vegetative states.

But apart from that, the data of these clones were almost exactly the same as hers. At that time, she was in her early thirties.

Over the next few decades, the scientist has been researching related projects and constantly improving the cloning technology. However, human lifespan is limited after all, and people get sick. About 35 years ago, when the scientist was 45 years old, she, like her family members, was affected by a family history of heart disease and needed a heart transplant. However, compared to a normal heart transplant, she chose to use her own clone for the heart transplant. This crazy and daring scientist used a pre-programmed medical capsule and completed the heart transplant herself without any help. Unexpectedly, the operation was not only a great success, but the transplanted heart did not show any rejection reaction at all.

The successful operation further strengthened the scientist's resolve. She continued her research into cloning technology, using these clones, whose brains were no longer functioning, to replace nearly all of her own aging organs over the course of several decades. This resulted in her looking exactly like she did at 20, despite reaching sixty. After decades of research, the scientist had nearly solved all the problems and was just one step away from resolving the problem of the clones' brains not functioning properly. However, her ageless beauty attracted unwanted attention.

The head of the institute where the scientist worked at the time wasn't a professional, but the mistress of a powerful military figure. Besides her beauty and figure, that woman was also incredibly intelligent and possessed a great sense of propriety. She knew when to intervene and when not to. She never interfered with the institute's affairs and was extremely respectful to everyone, even an intern. She also obeyed the military figure's orders without questioning them. This was why she enjoyed such favor and power. However, as she aged, her beauty and figure gradually faded. Seeing the figure of the powerful figure finding a younger lover, her days of prosperity were numbered, and for someone who was easily bored with the past, she naturally sought every possible way to prevent this from happening. Coincidentally, the mad scientist, who had achieved unparalleled success in cloning technology, was usually aloof and unapproachable, with whom she could be considered a friend.

What happened next is predictable. The lover approached the mad scientist and, through subtle probing, inquired about his unwavering beauty. The scientist, unfazed, quickly explained the reason. Upon learning the truth, the lover offered to be cloned as a test subject. Each had their own agenda: the lover's desire for rejuvenation, the scientist's desire for more data for comparison. So, with little debate, they reached a consensus.

Scientists' technology has advanced by leaps and bounds over the past few decades. In just one month, she had cloned her lover, and after a series of surgeries, her lover's appearance and figure remained at their peak. With the creation of new clones, scientists have taken their progress even further. The clones they now create have brain functions that are almost identical to the originals. The only problem is that these new clones lack long-term memory, only short-term.

The obvious technological advancements had further weakened the scientist's moral and ethical values, so she asked her lover for more experimental samples. The lover, having tasted the sweetness of the scientist's favor, naturally had no objections. Through her connections, she obtained over ten death row inmates from the prison and built a secret laboratory for the scientist, equipped with comprehensive security facilities and personnel. From then on, the scientist's research was smooth sailing, and she was always willing to meet the needs of her lover, who fully supported her research.

The lover not only received rejuvenation from the scientists, but also volunteered to serve as the primary experimenter in subsequent research, undergoing hundreds of surgical procedures that significantly enhanced her physical fitness. As her body evolved, so did her ambition. Three years later, during an incident, she eliminated the powerful figure who had discovered her and the scientists' intrigue. Leveraging her connections and relationships, she nurtured a puppet to replace the powerful figure, effectively wielding all the military's resources. Their long relationship fostered trust and even led to their marriage. From this point on, the two men were free to work together, and cloning technology advanced by leaps and bounds. Fourteen years ago, they collaborated to fully complete their cloning experiments. Their clones were indistinguishable from the originals, and could even be genetically programmed to control their consciousness. Furthermore, their experiments also resulted in a further product: the so-called synthetic human.