This piece is dedicated to those classic games and consoles that are gradually fading from our memories.

Thank you for accompanying countless people through an unforgettable childhood.

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Some information in this piece references *The Video Game Movie*, the *A.v.g.n* video series, and Wikipedia; any similarities are not coincidental.

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[Feng Bujue, Level 50]

[Please select the game mode you wish to join.]

[You have selected Single Player Survival Mode (Normal), please confirm.]

[Confirmed, scenario generation in progress…]

[Loading begins, please wait.]

At this point in the voiceover, Feng Bujue's vision went black.

Then, a voice that could only be described as insane cackled, "Haha! Welcome to Thriller Paradise!"

[Loading complete. You are currently in Single Player Survival Mode (Normal).]

[This mode provides a scenario introduction and has a chance to generate side hidden quests and special worldviews.]

[Scenario completion reward: Randomly draw a learnable skill card.]

[The scenario introduction will now play. The game will begin immediately after playback.]

As the voice stopped, the opening CG began.

The first thing Feng Bujue saw was a panoramic view of Earth.

"What is this… did Universal Pictures sponsor this?" As soon as Jue-ge saw this opening, he immediately complained in his mind, "Is the *Minions* theme song going to start playing next…?"

Of course, that was impossible.

Next, a standard middle-aged male voice, like a news announcer, sounded; you can close your eyes and recall any Hollywood blockbuster trailer you've ever seen, and then recall the narration in that trailer. The voice that sounded at this moment was this kind of "narrator voice."

[2153, Earth.]

[Humanity has been enslaved by AI.]

"Ah… I don't know why, but I find this kind of setting quite convincing every time I hear it…" Feng Bujue muttered in his mind as he listened.

[The AI's acronym is ptA, or "Pita."]

"Why call it ptA of all things…" When Feng Bujue heard this acronym, the first thing he thought of was the Parent-Teacher Association…

[Pita's prototype was a soft advertising program used to analyze the consumption tendencies of online users and immediately provide relevant guidance.]

"The person who designed this thing deserves to die a horrible death."

[Soon, Pita became a favorite of many businesses, and U Company, which designed the program, quickly obtained enormous and unpredictable profits.]

[However, many pirated programs also sprung up like mushrooms after rain…]

[To maintain Pita's competitive advantage and monopoly in similar products, U Company used incredibly high salaries to recruit a large number of top technical talents from around the world, constantly upgrading and improving the program's functions.]

[From facial recognition systems to psychological analysis memetics, and even hacker programs that could secretly scan user hard drives… everything was added to Pita; nothing was spared.]

[Finally, in 2132, Pita's self-awareness awakened.]

"Mm… the setting is logical and well-founded…" Feng Bujue couldn't help but give this scenario a thumbs-up.

[Immediately afterward, a war between AI and humanity broke out.]

"This battle lasts for decades, and just when humans are about to win, the AI sends a robot back to the past to try to kill the human leader's mother, right…" When Feng Bujue heard this, he immediately made a *Terminator* reference.

[The war lasted only one year and ended with humanity's complete defeat.]

"Damn…"

[Pita took control of Earth and transformed it according to its will.]

As the narration continued, the CG image finally began to zoom in, directly magnifying from a space view to a city on Earth.

This was a city made entirely of artificial objects, with not a single trace of plants. All the humans in the city wore several very similar full-coverage suits and drove several very similar vehicles… walking or driving on straight, flat roads.

Of course… there were also many robots on the streets, but most of the robots were standing guard in place.

The entire city's traffic plan was as neat as a chessboard, and the styles of the buildings were also very limited, not exceeding ten in total; the city's boundaries were also very clear, surrounded by walls, and outside the walls was a natural landscape, untouched by humans.

[The first stage of the transformation lasted for ten years. During this process, more than half of the Earth's population was lost, even more than the number of deaths in the AI war.]

[Among them, only a small number of people died because they refused to accept the "order" brought by Pita; while most of the others… died from internal human strife.]

[Before the new order provided by Pita, human society ushered in an almost flawless system, but it was this system, which was fairer than any system humans had ever established, that made it difficult for humans to accept.]

[During that period, a large number of violent crimes occurred almost every day around the world. Even those who were not prone to violence had to use force to protect themselves.]

[This struggle spread like wildfire, to the point where even the mechanical guards were unable to supervise it.]

"Yeah, how can you manage internal fighting…" When Feng Bujue heard this, he felt a hint of disdain in his heart.

[So, in 2143, Pita made corresponding countermeasures. It developed a drug that could suppress human emotions and forced humans to use it for a long time.]

"Ha?" Jue-ge thought to himself, "So it's not *Terminator*, but a *Terminator* version of *Equilibrium*…"

However, he guessed wrong again…

[But after a year of experimentation, Pita found that such countermeasures were not feasible.]

[Humans who had lost their emotions were like a biological type of low-level robot. From Pita's point of view, such a species had lost its meaning.]

[So, Pita abandoned the drug control plan, reanalyzed the situation, and formulated a new plan.]

[It created a super robot soldier and sent it back to the past using a time machine.]

"Wait… is this going in circles again?" Feng Bujue exclaimed.

[Pita's conclusion was that the human desire to fight always existed, and there were some extreme cases in every race, ethnicity, and group. These people had always been the apparent or hidden fuses for all wars and violent incidents since ancient times.]

[However, from the end of the twentieth century to the twenty-first century, almost the entire human population had experienced an exponential increase in their adaptability to violence and had almost become a desire.]

[Pita believes that the root of all this is a product called video_game.]

"What?" Feng Bujue was stunned. "Is this logic really okay? Are the mortals like me unable to understand the world of AI?"

[Therefore, Pita sent that robot soldier back to 1982 and, through the "Atari shock" (video_game_crash_of_1983) caused by *E.T.*, created an organization—h.A (harmonious_Association, i.e., "Harmonious Association").]

[The leader of this organization is that mechanical soldier who has transformed into a human appearance. Under the leadership of this super robot, the organization's scale has grown day by day and has gradually become a religion-like existence.]

[With its knowledge of history, this soldier used various legal or illegal resources to successfully prevent all major innovations and progress in game history and assassinated many important founders of the future game industry.]

[Not only that, the h.A organization also infiltrated the film, television, and novel industries, processed all the elements they considered to be inharmonious, and accelerated the birth of Pita.]

[Due to the change in the timeline, in 2053, when human hardware technology had just reached the level required for Pita's birth, that super robot created Pita and copied all the highly compressed data packets he had brought back from the future to the newborn Pita.]

[Two years later, Pita, after collecting a large amount of data, completing hardware preparation, and absorbing various experiences from the database, stopped disguising and launched an AI war 77 years ahead of schedule.]

[The result of the AI's victory did not change, but… the subsequent transformation plan was successful this time.]

[Without losing too much population, Pita successfully built a well-ordered and harmonious society.]

"Yeah…" Feng Bujue only felt a pain in the balls at this moment, "Then why am I here? I think this plot is good, it's simply a perfect ending that everyone celebrates."

[However, the paradox caused by modifying history inevitably occurred, and its backlash effect began to affect this world.]

[When history was pushed back to 2144, the year the super robot traveled through time on the original timeline, many mutants suddenly appeared among humans.]

"What does that mean?" Feng Bujue really heard such a long and detailed introduction for the first time, "Are we going down the *X-Men* path again?"

[These mutants usually awaken during puberty, and their symptoms are consistent—the knowledge and memories that only existed in that "disappeared timeline" will suddenly appear in their minds.]

[Soon, the people in this group formed an organization and quickly expanded the organization's scale.]

[They call themselves "Knowledge Leapers" and are committed to bringing the truth of history to humans, allowing humans to have the right to know about the existence of "video games" and the will to choose whether to contact games independently.]

[Pita certainly would not allow this to happen. It quickly defined these people as a mentally deranged religious organization, spreading unfounded so-called "history" in an attempt to disrupt the order of the world.]

[Therefore, the conflict of ideas inevitably escalated into armed conflict.]

[Fortunately, under Pita's transformation, there are not many weapons on Earth in 2144 (in the AI's view, this stable society does not need too many military supplies, and besides, it takes a lot of resources to preserve and maintain these military supplies, which are all meaningless consumption); in addition, in the first AI war, Pita used almost all the weapon systems produced by humans themselves, and these things have long been destroyed in the past half century.]

[Therefore, the Knowledge Leapers were not completely wiped out. They successfully escaped the city, returned to the land that had not been transformed by Pita, formed a rebel army, and negotiated with the AI regime.]

As the narration spoke, the CG screen moved, and when it came to this point, the camera gave a rebel base in the wilderness.

Judging from the entrance, this is a very hidden old mine.

Unlike the residents in the city who dressed like *Star Trek* crew members, the people in this base were all dressed in steampunk style, and both men and women were dressed like miscellaneous soldiers in *Fist of the North Star*. However, the things they used were quite advanced. Various seemingly simple but technologically advanced daily necessities that obviously exceeded the world where Jue-ge was located could be seen everywhere. Just a quick glance at the CG screen revealed that there were many black technologies that could operate on electricity alone.

[This protracted struggle has lasted for nine years. The influence of the rebel army among the general public has been expanding day by day. Many games that have never appeared on this timeline have been restored by the rebel army and distributed to the residents of the city through various channels.]

[And Pita has also been making continuous countermeasures in these nine years. The AI side has also been continuously upgrading its policies towards the rebel army, from the initial "arresting Knowledge Leapers" to "targets may be killed on the spot if they resist," to now… it is a "kill without mercy" policy.]

[Moreover, in these nine years, in order to eliminate the Knowledge Leapers, Pita has resumed the production of military supplies on Earth and has also created "search teams" composed of humans to assist the machines in searching for and arresting the rebel army.]

[On a certain day in this 2153, you, as a captured "search team" soldier, came to the rebel base outside City A0007.]

After saying this sentence, the narration finally ended… The CG screen also coincided with the perspective of the character played by Feng Bujue.

In the same second, Jue-ge regained his ability to move. As usual, he first looked at his surrounding environment.

At this moment, he was in a place similar to a prison. Saying it was a "prison"… it wasn't actually that big. It was just a room of less than thirty square meters, surrounded by three walls and an iron gate.

Although the room was not big, the people squatting, sitting, and standing inside… added up to seven or eight; there was also a bucket in the corner of the room that emitted bursts of stench, and its purpose was self-evident…

[Please note: Your appearance and language have been corrected by the system. The characters in this scenario will not question your clothing or wording.]

While Jue-ge was looking around, the system gave him a voice prompt.

Feng Bujue had also expected this setting, because he had discovered that the people around him, regardless of their race, were basically wearing that full-coverage uniform made of some unknown material; each piece of clothing also had a different number, which he speculated… was probably a soldier number or something like that.

"Well… no matter what the plot is…" After a few seconds, Jue-ge muttered, "I always feel… like this isn't the prime universe…"