Even without walking in, you can "hear" the rat's screams while walking around.
If it was Zhou You in the past, then he would be inspired by the screams to feel compassion.
But now, there is no wave in his heart.
Zhou You just nodded to Ding Ling, who happened to turn around and saw him, and then quickly walked to Huayin's laboratory next door.
When he entered, Hua Yin was leaning on a microscope, looking down at it.
Displayed on the computer monitor next to it is the picture taken by the microscope at this time, which contains two cells, one large and one small.
At this time, the smaller cell is pounced on the large cell, using its own pointed cone structure to continuously tear open the cell membrane of the large cell like eating food, and then suck the cytoplasm leaked from the large cell into the body.
After a long time, the large cells finally completely disintegrated and turned into a pool of gradually dispersing debris.
The small cells seem to swim into the middle of the large cell debris and settle down, and then expand and contract regularly as if imitating the human heartbeat. However, each time they expand, they will absorb part of the large cell debris scattered around them.
With a smile on her face, Hua Yin raised her head and stretched. She saw Zhou You next to her, looking up at the screen above with his hands behind his back.
Sensing Hua Yin's gaze, Zhou You turned away and asked, "What is this?"
"It's your living cells that are eating the mouse's hematopoietic stem cells."
Zhou You asked in surprise: "My living cells? When were they sampled? Which batch?"
"Yes. In the earliest batch, most of the cells sampled at that time had extremely strong viability in vitro, but most of them were tortured to death by our research. However, even if some cells with extra tenacious vitality were disassembled, they could not survive in vitro.
With the help of various combinations of drugs, they recovered and have the ability to proliferate indefinitely like cancer cells. Now we are trying to use your infinitely proliferating cells to engulf more genes of other species to see if we can
What useful changes will it cause? At the same time, we are also trying to restore the precise formula of the previous combination of medicines."
Zhou You asked in confusion: "Didn't you make any records at that time?"
Hua Yin blushed slightly when he heard this and said awkwardly: "There is no record because the birth of the combination drug at that time came from an accident."
"Accident?"
"Yeah. I had just given birth to Zhou Wei not long ago. Although the lactation period has been greatly shortened now, I still want to breastfeed for a while to see if it can promote the child's development. But I can't let go of my work here, so
Sometimes I bring the child to the laboratory. But the child's development speed is indeed much faster than I thought. In less than a month, he can crawl on the ground and his hands are very strong."
"Then one time, I was holding the baby with one hand and preparing medicine with the other hand. Suddenly he struggled hard and almost fell out of my arms. I quickly threw the bottle to catch him. But I accidentally threw it
The bottle was too heavy, and the thrown bottles knocked over several beakers one after another. At that time, I was afraid that the medicine would splash on the child, so I just hurriedly stepped back. Later I discovered that many samples on the experimental table were contaminated, and one of them was
Immortal proliferating cells appeared in a contaminated sample. Later, I kept trying to reproduce this drug reaction, but never succeeded. I knew it must be a problem of proportion, but I had clearly reproduced the previous perfect proportion perfectly.
But we still can't succeed, and now we are still trying to figure out where the problem lies."
Zhou You thought for a while and asked: "Is it possible that it is caused by some kind of environmental pollutant?"
Huayin: "It is indeed possible. I am indeed trying now, and this is what I am staying to do. But the work of cell fusion cannot be stopped now."
"That's right." Zhou You also walked to the microscope, leaned down, and used the microscope's magnification to observe the cells that had split from his own body and were living alone under the cover glass.
This feeling is a bit strange.
It would be inappropriate to say that this cell has nothing to do with Zhou You. After all, it is self-replicated and multiplied from the samples taken from his body. It is highly consistent in the original genetic sequence, much more consistent than twins.
But it is still wrong to say that this thing is part of Zhou You. The DNA chain of the human body is indeed very stable, but it is not absolutely stable. Any self-replication of the DNA chain has the possibility of mutation. What Zhou You saw now
The cells have been iteratively divided in vitro for countless times, and Huayin has been using the cells on this branch to conduct phagocytosis and fusion experiments. After each phagocytosis and fusion, the characteristics of the cells will change to some extent. If this
If the cells are still traveling around the body, they should have been executed by immune cells long ago.
But the subtle thing is that when I activate the electromagnetic induction mechanism in my brain and try to sense external bioelectromagnetic signals, I vaguely feel that there is some kind of wonderful resonance between myself and these cells.
It seemed as if I was swimming in the water and enjoying my meal.
Zhou You knew that this wonderful perception came from this independent cell.
At this moment, the cell finally completed the complete phagocytosis of the large dead cell and fell into a brief state of silence.
Immediately afterwards, Zhou You noticed extremely high heat coming from inside his body, and he actually had the illusion that it was splitting into two.
At this time, Huayin did not notice Zhou You's abnormality. Instead, he looked at the display screen and explained to Zhou You himself: "The metabolism of the infinitely proliferating cells on this evolutionary route is extremely high. Once nutrients are sufficient, they will start immediately.
Self-replicating.”
Zhou You snorted, "I know."
As he was talking, the middle part of the cell in the microscope began to tighten rapidly like a belt, and a new cell membrane was rapidly forming.
At this moment, Zhou You, who was synchronized with this cell perception, seemed to feel that his consciousness was split into two.
He quickly controlled the magnetic field sensing cells in his brain to return to human characteristics, while also constricting his consciousness and turning off resonance.
But what was unexpected was that the cell suddenly accelerated its division speed, and in just a blink of an eye, it suddenly broke from the middle and split into two.
Huayin exclaimed, "Strange, why is the speed of splitting accelerated?"
As Huayin spoke, he turned to look at Zhou You next to him.
At this time, Zhou You beside him had already stood up, but his eyes were dull, his mind was wandering, and he was in a daze.
Huayin is not surprised by this.
She has known Zhou You for a long time, and she knows that Zhou You sometimes suddenly thinks of something important, and then becomes dazed on the spot like he is now.
So Huayin didn't interrupt him, just rushed to the operating table and carefully opened the cover slip, and used a high-precision pipette to extract a new food cell with the help of another microscope, and put it
Drop it again onto the glass slide of the divided immortal cells to start proliferation and fusion again.
At this time, Zhou You was unable to interrupt the resonance in time, so his consciousness was completely diffused, and he simultaneously established contact with all nearby targets that could think and resonate within a range of more than 100 meters.
If he travels elsewhere, that's fine. The only ones that can resonate with him are some other alien creatures. There will be an obvious sense of dislocation in perception, so it is easy to completely cut off the resonance.
But the problem now is that there are a large number of autologous cells taken from him in this building.
These cells are the same as the ones you see now. No matter how iteratively mutates, they have the same origin as him.
From a physiological point of view, these were placed in different laboratories, subjected to various experiments, and devoured sample cells that were fused with the genes of different animals. They were all clones of Zhou You himself.
If Zhou You were just a normal person, he wouldn't be affected in any way.
But he happens to be not.
At this moment, Zhou You felt a strong sense of confusion in his heart.
Sometimes he felt that he was wandering in a warm ocean, enjoying the comfortable and moist external nutrition. Sometimes he felt that his whole body was being violently electrified and he was in pain. Sometimes he felt that he was already old and was rapidly moving toward the end of the world.
Death is about to reach the end of life, but sometimes it has just swallowed the cytoplasm of some other animals, and the DNA strands between the two collided together by coincidence, and then by coincidence, they were completely connected like building a ladder.
.
However, the series connection between these two gene chains does not conform to the laws of nature, just like a bug in a computer program.
If it were an ordinary cell or a microorganism, it would quickly disintegrate and die because of this bug.
However, the traveling cells with the super genetic compatibility and self-healing ability brought about by the third-order super-limited ability are just struggling painfully, and then this unreasonably long DNA chain will produce high-frequency jitters, some causing overall instability.
Stable gene fragments will be thrown out by themselves due to this shaking, and eventually complete the self-correction of the DNA chain, which is the fusion process that Huayin has been studying.
Previously, Zhou You, the "guinea pig", was only responsible for providing samples, rarely participated in the research process, and never thought of coming to see these "doppelgangers" of himself.
This is not because he is lazy, but because he specializes in his profession.
Although he is a graduate of a prestigious university and a smart academic, after all, he has little accumulation of knowledge in this area. When he comes to the laboratory, he can only help out and be a basic operator. This is overkill.
What a waste of life.
Now, Zhou Yu is here, and because of the regional resonance that was accidentally opened, I have a clearer understanding of the feelings of these "self-doppelgangers" who are suffering.
That's right, Zhou You was a little horrified to discover that those scattered cells of his own also had feelings.
Whether they are individual cells that exist alone or are aggregated into clusters and show clear functional differentiation, or they are probably directed and cultured into cell clusters such as organs and functional groups, they all send out messages to his "mother" almost at the same time.
In response, everyone was in a state of joy.
Just jumping for joy!
Zhou You felt very confident.
While he was feeling the pain or comfort from the outside, he was also thinking to himself that maybe human beings' understanding of emotions was wrong from the beginning.
Emotions are not exclusive to humans, but have clearly existed from the beginning.
Whether they are humans or other mammals, even plants, or even single-celled organisms in ancient times, they actually have "emotions".
It's just that different species have different perceptions of emotions and different ways of expressing them. Therefore, humans can only observe similar behaviors from their own perspective to forcibly understand the emotions of other creatures.
For example, Zhou You also discovered that even those cells that were suffering from pain and could die at any time did not show any anger or complaint.
They may know the value of everything they have experienced to the "mother body", so they are willing to sacrifice themselves.
In addition, Zhou You also discovered that, for example, on the slide where Huayin had just placed new food cells, the two newly divided immortal cells could sense subtle changes in the concentration of chemical compounds in the surrounding water environment the moment the food appeared.
When it arrives, it has already begun to squirm happily and move towards the food.
What's even more outrageous is that as his resonance with these cells became deeper and deeper, he actually read a piece of information in the "thinking" of some of the cells.
This piece of information is clearly recorded like an electromagnetic signal burned into a mechanical hard disk.
After sensing the appearance of the "mother body", the branch cells that recorded this important information simultaneously produced a strong physiological response and actively disintegrated at the same time. This information was then sent out using extremely fine electromagnetic signals and was received by Zhou You.
arrive.
After a long time, Zhou You finally regained his composure before his schizophrenia broke out.
He took a deep breath, turned to look at Huayin next to him, and said slowly: "These cells that were sampled from my body and have now fully proliferated and expanded are still alive."
Huayin nodded, "Yes, they are all still alive."
Zhou You shook his head, "The life I'm talking about is not the life you understand, but the real life."
"ah?"
"I know the exact formula of the medicine you made because of the accident before, and I also know what the impurities are."
Huayin: "Ah?"
Zhou You: "It's iron, it's rust, iron dioxide."
Huayin: "How on earth did you know?"
Zhou You smiled and said, "They, oh no, we told me. In addition, we can start the next experimental plan."
Huayin looked confused, "What's the plan?"
"Return. These cells that belong to me have collected enough information for me, and now they can return to my body, become a part of me, and bring all this information back to me. Of course, since they are more or less
There are some mutations, so they may be rejected by my immune system, and there will be a running-in process. But I think that with the help of special drugs and immunosuppressants, these cells can survive in my body and complete the process.
Involving cellular iterations throughout my body.”
There is a saying that Zhou You has not fully explained yet.
Previously, one of the drawbacks of his genetic simulation ability was that it was difficult to actively control, and it was not stable enough. It would always evolve on its own based on subconscious needs.
Although this can bring great convenience to his various actions, it cannot be solidified and he cannot truly transform into some kind of animal.
Now, Zhou You knows that after he completes cell replacement throughout his body, he can actively control his gene simulation ability and solidify it.
More importantly, Zhou You believes that those cells that incorporate a large number of genetic fragments from the current mutated mice can bring him more genetic information that he has never been exposed to before, allowing him to completely transform into a new animal.
, the Rat King who has never appeared before. The body is a rat, but the heart is human.