"Do you think he's building this?" Shiller finally asked the first question.
This is indeed important. If Iron Man plans to implement his Nimrod project here, rescuing him would become significantly more challenging.
Now everyone assumes that Iron Man is trapped here, but if he finds this place to be a pretty good experimental lab, where the Outer God's words sound exceedingly pleasant, and thus he's unwilling to leave, then forcibly taking him away would be unlikely.
"I can only say he's making attempts in this area," Peter replied. "This cosmos and our cosmos have different structures, and the principles of creating such things might be different too. I see some traces of exploration, but I can't say for sure."
"Tell me more specifically." Shiller said, "I'm referring to this cube. What do you think he's doing, and to what extent has he achieved it?"
"He..." Peter suddenly paused, then started to zone out, as if he was seeing a revolving lantern, but soon snapped back to reality and said, "Honestly, I don't know what he's doing; he seems to have gone insane."
Shiller knew that Peter definitely knew what Iron Man was doing; he just had a mental block, unable to express this matter verbally. So Shiller said, "You're too obsessed with the existence of human material forms. In fact, in such a cosmos, humans can exist in any form. Perhaps every breath you take is a part of Iron Man, and even possibly your thoughts are part of him. Obsessing over Human Society's ethical principles is pointless."
"Of course, I'm not saying this is bad. Maintaining humanity here is indeed a good thing; you must have the highest Sanity Points among us. Narrating these matters may cause your Sanity Points to drop, but if we can't understand Iron Man's condition, we can't save him, let alone contact him—it would be nonsense."
"I brought you here to leverage you, to understand Iron Man's state of existence. This helps us better complete the task, doesn't it?"
Shiller walked over and nudged Peter, who laid back down, buried his face in his curled paws, and after a while of mental preparation finally said, "It's his neural system."
Shiller wasn't surprised, but the other two seemed baffled: "What?"
"Do you understand the human neural system?" Peter asked.
Little Superman was completely unfamiliar but wouldn't directly say he was illiterate in front of Shiller. He said, "Sounds like a medical term."
"Indeed it is," Peter sighed again, "Simply put, within a person's body is a filamentous network for transmitting signals from the brain, which you can regard as the human body's circuitry. The brain issues commands, the neural system transmits them, and only then can a person move."
Constantine and Little Superman nodded, indicating they understood the basics. Peter looked up and surveyed the room, saying, "Iron Man, using some unknown method, has stripped his own neural system, modified it, cultivated it into this red fungal form, and cultivated it within the cube."
"Built a Primitive Jungle ecosystem outside to nurture life, created mechanical Pteranodons to regularly hunt and feed these fungi."
"Why is he doing this?" Constantine persisted in questioning the purpose; he still couldn't see the practical use of doing such a thing.
"If he just wanted to preserve his neural system, there's absolutely no need to make it this complex; he could simply put it in a sufficiently airtight container."
Peter's tone remained low; clearly, he was very reluctant to speak on this matter, as it was frankly a bit antihuman: "He's aiming to utilize his neural system."
"How to utilize it?" Constantine pressed further.
"Iron Man's neural system is definitely different from others," Peter concluded, "because his brain differs from others. His neural activity far surpasses ordinary people, which means the distributed network woven from his neurons could become a type of biological computer."
"But what's the point of building this computer?" Constantine continued to ask, "I can understand that maybe he's trying to escape here, go somewhere or even leave this cosmos, but how can a computer have an effect in this process?"
Peter wasn't impatient; he knew explaining these things to a complete layman required effort because ordinary people really can't grasp the nuances of professional fields.
"Biological computers are, of course, for computation. I know you're bound to ask what exactly he's computing—broadly speaking, it's the entire cosmos," Peter paused briefly before continuing, "Suppose this is his first or at least early station within this cosmos; he needs to understand this cosmos, understand the structure and rules of the cosmos, naturally necessitating computer assistance."
"I'm still a bit confused," Constantine pondered aloud, "The cosmic rules you're talking about, are they things like mathematics or physics? Aren't those discovered through observation? Like what does 1+1 equal, or will apples fall down?"
"Normally speaking, that's precisely how it should be," Peter didn't refute. Mathematics and physics indeed started from these simple rules, which people now take as common knowledge simply because the era of exploring these things is so distant, even etched in human genes. However, in ancient times, from the era of ancient apes evolving into humans, these things truly required observation and analysis.
"You probably haven't heard of the course on Cosmic Construction Science," Peter said. "But in this course, understanding precedes observation. You must first comprehend certain things before you can observe them. Anyone who has come into contact with Cosmic Construction Science will have this mindset, which can also be considered as a genius-exclusive way of thinking."
Constantine was thoroughly bewildered; he simply couldn't imagine what kind of thing requires understanding before seeing, which completely contradicts the rules by which the human race perceives objects.
At this point, Shiller had to step in and explain, "If there's something that would drive you mad at a glance, how would you understand it?"
"You still want to understand it?!" Constantine said in shock. "If something would drive me mad just by looking at it, it would mean I wouldn't want to live anymore if I didn't run a thousand kilometers in three seconds."
Shiller also scratched the ground with his paw; Constantine was a complete pragmatist and empiricist, the type of old electrician who would know if a socket is live by touching it. If this shock didn't kill him, he wouldn't touch a socket again in his lifetime and could precisely navigate around all the power distribution facilities in an entire area — a unique talent.
"If you fell into a place where most things would drive you insane at a glance, or at least a place you think you shouldn't observe anything, but you still want to know what's going on, what would you do?" Shiller asked again.
After meticulously pondering over it, Constantine said, "If looking at it would drive me mad, I'd gouge my eyes out."
This time it was Peter's turn to look at him in astonishment. Then he heard Constantine say, "If no form of observation works, including vision, hearing, and touch, then I would choose to put myself on the brink of death — a state where the brain can't function normally — and then just ask aloud. That way, I could receive some information with limited capacity without getting killed."
Shiller was also surprised; there's no denying that a Cthulhu mythos writer is truly fearless. Does he usually gather material using this method?
In fact, the principle behind Cthulhu's spiritual pollution is the overload of knowledge that the human brain cannot parse, hence leading to madness. But if one's capacity is reduced and their consciousness blurred, it might indeed be possible to gain a bit of knowledge without endangering one's life. Many who contact Outer Gods survive through dreams.
However, clearly, Iron Man wouldn't adopt this method, his mind simply wouldn't go there. He would employ a more instinctual method, or rather, one that is instinctual to him: create a tool.
If direct viewing is not allowed, I'll make glasses to try filtering the pollution. If glasses don't work, I'll use a camera to record it. If that doesn't work either, then I'll resort to surveying instruments — at least I can get some paper data.
In other words, this neural network computer is the surveying instrument Iron Man created or rather a computer with surveying functions, aiming to help him understand this cosmos with a structure and rules entirely different from his own.
"Did he succeed?" Shiller asked again.
Peter shook his head and said, "This is the part I don't know. I mentioned before that the difficulty with biological computers lies in information extraction. I don't know how he extracts information from it, so I also don't know if he ever extracted anything or how much he extracted."
"Is there any way to find out?" Shiller asked.
"It's very difficult," Peter said. "The self-repair function of a biological computer is both an advantage and a disadvantage. If it repairs too well, it's hard to notice if someone has used it. Even in a pristine state, it may not display its history, not to mention now that it's damaged."
"Could the damage actually be beneficial?" Shiller asked.
Peter was taken aback. Shiller continued, "If nothing was ever extracted, then a lot of information must have accumulated here — maybe information that was useful that some existence didn't want Iron Man to obtain, which is why they destroyed it. If information was being continuously extracted, then maybe recent information couldn't be revealed, leading to its destruction. If it was already fully extracted, and abandoned, then perhaps the hardware here was of some importance, prompting someone to use such a destructive method."
"That makes sense," Peter began brainstorming again, scratching his claws on the floor as he spoke, "but can such an existence really know in real time what is stored in this computer?"
Shiller also realized the problem; are things like this familiar or alien to Outer Gods? This is hard to determine. They might know something about the human race's nervous system, but would they understand how a computer made from one's own nervous system works?
If they didn't understand, they wouldn't know what it's for, let alone monitor it. But if they did, given their knowledge, they might as well capture and convert Iron Man on the spot.
"I think the last scenario is more probable," Peter said. "Some beings here might not know what Iron Man was doing; they were just attracted to it, came to check it, and accidentally damaged it."
Shiller nodded; it did indeed resemble something Outer God Society might do. The first suspect he considered was Nyarlathotep, but after further thought, he ruled it out. Nyarla is very close to humans, he understands how human structures and devices operate, and he likes to save face. This kind of act would be done discreetly, not with such violent means.
Could it really be Yog? Shiller was a bit concerned. We, a few cats, haven't even left the Novice Village, and already we're about to face the One Who Integrates All. Battling a big tree guard is one thing, but opening the door and confronting an Elden Beast — is this right?