amaotonovel Chapter 3915 The Nameless Bat (85)
Chapter 3915 The Nameless Bat (85)
Chapter 3915 The Nameless Bat (Eighty-Five)
The Batman Base in the Battlegrounds, which is that network of interconnected caves, was built with a council chamber in the largest cave for the convenience of holding meetings. Although the Batmen had established the principle of one cave per person and not disturbing each other a long time ago, the largest cave was built for the convenience of holding meetings.
The council chamber retains the original cave-like appearance, but a dozen rows of seats have been carved into the walls. At the very center of the chamber is not a podium, but an enormous spotlight. Whenever Batman speaks, the spotlight illuminates his seat, effectively achieving a decentralized effect while also fitting Batman's aesthetic.
At this moment, summoned by the main universe Batman, all the Batmen of his faction arrived—the vast majority of righteous or reformed Batmen stood in the council chamber. This included not only Batmen from the Light Multiverse or its derivative universes, such as Arkham Batman, Great Adventure Batman, and Lego Batman, but also Batwoman, Bat-Dragon, Batmobile, Doomsday Batman, Flash Batman, War Batman, and Cyborg Batman from the Dark Multiverse. Even Broken Bat, who used the body of the Angel of Death Paul, joined the righteous camp of the main universe Batman.
There were about twenty or thirty Batmen standing in front of the seating area, but they weren't in the same row; most of them were standing together in familiar groups. The main universe Batman stood in the very center row, and when he spoke, spotlights illuminated his face.
"I believe you have already noticed that a brand new crisis is spreading across the multiverse. My universe and other universes have experienced similar events—electronic life invading Earth, committing murders or disrupting its order. Does anyone have any new intelligence on this matter?"
"So this has happened in your universe too?" Batman the Adventurer said, frowning. "Recently, a super hacker revealed the true identities of the Bat-Family online. Barbara and I spent a lot of effort to remove those messages. But when we tried to trace the hacker's identity, we couldn't find anything."
"So it's like this over there too?" Batwoman's voice carried a chill. "I thought this was a special event in the Dark Multiverse."
“Yes, we have made contact,” Batman the Flash said. “We discovered a peculiar cyber virus spreading across the Dark Multiverse Earth’s network, with many people being manipulated to attack others. We conducted a joint investigation, but found nothing.”
The Batmobile spoke, "As you know, when my physical body was destroyed, I uploaded my consciousness, which is why I was able to possess this vehicle. To prevent my body from being destroyed again, I made many backups of my consciousness online. But recently, someone has been digging into my cybersecurity vault, and I've lost many backups. So this isn't just targeting me?"
“Of course,” Batman Arkham said. “To dethrone me as president, it used the Amazon to create a diplomatic incident, attacked the industrial base in Western California to damage my reputation, and assassinated the governor of California. If it weren’t for magic, it would have succeeded.”
“That’s right. I only managed to preserve my backup of consciousness after I used magic to set up a magic server,” the Batmobile said. “This guy doesn’t seem to be able to access the magic network.”
“My universe is pretty much the same,” said Batman the Flash. “That guy blew up a huge power tower, and if I hadn’t caught the Goddess of Magic and squeezed some money out of her, it would have been the biggest terrorist attack in history.”
“So that’s how you all are,” said Lego Batman, jumping onto the railing. “That guy stole Gotham’s weather controllers and created a massive thunderstorm that nearly melted the entire city. Luckily, under my leadership… I mean, thanks to the Justice League’s efforts, we cut off the central power source, which prevented it from succeeding. But even my hacking skills couldn’t catch it; this guy is really tough to deal with.”
The other Batmen were mostly agreeing. Their focus lately wasn't on the Battleworld, as they were all busy working on magical energy in their own universes, so they were paying more attention to Earth and naturally noticed the anomaly.
“And just recently, to be precise, in the last week, it seems to have ended its probing and begun to attack, causing definite casualties. And we absolutely cannot stand idly by,” said the main universe Batman.
A moment of silence fell, but it wasn't that there was nothing to say; everyone was simply deep in thought. They needed to convey the most useful and accurate intelligence they possessed or knew.
“It’s not a hacker, and it’s not even cyber life; it’s more like a ghost hiding in signals,” the main universe’s Batman continued. “And in a piece of data intercepted by Barbara in our universe, it claims to be Batman. Do you think that’s true?”
“An electronic Batman? It’s not impossible, but I’m more inclined to believe it’s just a smokescreen.” Batwoman leaned on the railing, her eyes slightly narrowed. “If it were Batman, it wouldn’t have revealed itself so early. Because judging from its behavior, it’s not an aggressive aggressor, but a schemer lurking in the shadows.”
"While this sounds a lot like Batman, a good schemer shouldn't step into the limelight too early. If it wants to cause trouble in the shadows, it should never have told us it's Batman so soon. Because once we believe it's Batman, we'll definitely raise our assessment of its threat level. When someone is plotting, they don't want their opponent to take them seriously; they should try to appear weak so the other party can ignore them. Therefore, revealing its Batman identity would be a bad move, inconsistent with its style. It's a hoax."
“It also left its name on a corpse,” Arkham Batman said. “It said its name was ‘Brainiac.’”
"You mean it might be Brainiac from some other universe?" The mechanical Batman, the former killing machine of the Dark Universe, clearly knew more about this.
"You've had contact with Brainiac?" Batman turned to look at him. He was originally the merciless iron-fisted member of the Dark Knights, and after regaining his senses, he still wore the helmet of war and mastered its power, becoming the new God of War.
The mechanical Batman nodded and said, "After I returned to my universe, I took control of the Earth network and also traveled through the interstellar network. Brainiac has begun his cosmic conquest, and many universes have already been bottled up by him. I've fought him a few times, and he found that he couldn't gain the upper hand here, so he hasn't set his sights on Earth for the time being."
"Could you tell me more about him?" the main universe Batman asked.
"He is a powerful electronic life form, seemingly a planetary steward created by an extremely advanced and ancient civilization, but he later went out of control. In my opinion, his code is somewhat ancient, but extremely solid, and he will be a very difficult opponent."
"But you said he can't get the better of you."
"Yes, because although I am also a cyber life form, I am ultimately incorporating Batman's soul, which gives me an edge over him in abstract computation and emotion. However, his thread count and computing speed are superior to mine, which, while making it easier for him to invade the universe, also makes it impossible for him to deal with me."
“I don’t quite understand,” Batwoman said, gently shaking her head. “Why should artificial intelligence strive for leadership in emotional aspects?”
“Because 99% of intelligent life in the universe has emotions,” the cyborg Batman paused before saying, “to explain this in detail, I need to ask you first: do you believe in God?”
“I’ve never seen God with my own eyes, but I know that Heaven exists,” Batman Arkham said. “It’s a real Heaven, not some kind of fantasy. The angels in the Bible are real too. So God must exist too.”
“Yes, we don’t deny that,” the main universe Batman said. “Belief in God’s existence and faith in God are two different things. I guess you’re asking about the former, right?”
"That's right. So what kind of God do you think God is?"
“It’s hard to say, nobody here has ever seen him,” Batwoman said, “but judging from the Old Testament, he probably didn’t have a very good temper.”
“Although we’ve never seen him, we can deduce it,” the mechanical Batman said. “In our universe, 99% of all intelligent life combined are emotional, much like humans, which proves that God is the same. He must be a person with rich emotions and clear likes and dislikes, right?”
The other Batmen whispered among themselves, but they also agreed with his viewpoint. Because if there truly was a God who created the universe, then the way he made it meant that he desired a universe teeming with emotional beings.
"So from this we can deduce that God is not a purely logical being. He has feelings, his creations have feelings, his power has feelings, and there is even a tangible spectrum of emotions in the universe. What do you think this means?"
The Batmen remained silent. They already knew the answer, but simply didn't want to say it. However, the robotic Batman spoke for them.
"This means that our universe is not a creation of pure logic. The creator is not a program composed of logic. Therefore, electronic life, which can only operate according to a program of logic, is contrary to the universe."
"Because they possess emotions, intelligent life is closer to God, with a lower limit and a higher limit; because they lack emotions, electronic life is further away from God, with a higher lower limit but a lower limit. This is why electronic life constantly pursues emotions. The essential logic of electronic life is to continuously iterate in pursuit of perfection. And in this universe, the most perfect being, our supreme God, is an emotional being, so of course he pursues emotions."
“I see,” said the main universe Batman. And from that, he thought of even more.
The Batman of the main universe has witnessed Superman's power. His power doesn't solely stem from the superior physical attributes of a Kryptonian; it's somewhat akin to "the power of will." It's a completely idealistic power, illogical, even violating the laws of the universe, yet it exists nonetheless.
This means that the underlying logic of this universe must not be a very rigorous system. If that were the case, variables like Superman could not exist.
Another point is that if the universe is a highly precise program like artificial intelligence, then Heaven shouldn't exist, or rather, there shouldn't be such a large department maintaining its operation. Once the program is written, one or two people would suffice to monitor it; why have so many people, and seemingly more every day? The existence of that large group of angels in Heaven proves that the system must be riddled with flaws, which is why so many people are needed to maintain it.
A God capable of writing such a system must be of immense stature, and could not possibly be extremely rigorous. From this perspective, it seems that the more rigorous a life form is, the further it is from God; while a seemingly chaotic race like humanity is actually closer to God.