Void Jigsaw Puzzle

The old man's whole body was sunk firmly into the chair, his eyes were closed, his lips were slightly closed, but his wrinkled face was very calm.

Wearing a helmet terminal access device, he has immersed himself in massive amounts of data. These data are the digital presentation of human civilization and the last hope for the continuation of human civilization.

After an unknown amount of time, he slowly opened his eyes, a look of fatigue on his face.

He sat up from his chair and looked around, and found that the middle-aged man and woman were still standing quietly beside him, creating a relatively safe environment for him in the busy and somewhat noisy monitoring hall.

"Academician Deng, are you awake?" There was a hint of joy and a hint of urgency in the middle-aged man's tone.

"Menjie, please inform the Council Secretariat to convene a council meeting as soon as possible. We will discuss and determine the principles for data cleansing."

Deng Ailun's words were brief, but to Menjie, every word carried a great weight. His heart was pounding as he understood what the "data cleaning principle" meant.

After decades of data compression, organization and uploading, under the supervision of his wife, the first Mathematician, these data containing complete information about human civilization have been preserved fairly and safely, but they still need to be cleaned before they can be broadcast to the universe.

The reason is simple: the sheer volume of data is simply too vast. Even with the most advanced compression and encoding techniques known to man, it still far exceeds the imagination of Deng Ailun and his team. Consequently, this data must be significantly streamlined.

"Streamlining" is just a friendly way of saying it, but in reality it is deletion. However, it is not a simple and crude deletion, but a deletion based on certain principles, which are the data cleaning principles.

If we can only keep one ten-thousandth of the existing data, which data are the essence of human civilization and must be passed on?

Ten thousand people probably have ten thousand different opinions.

But now, humanity has run out of time, and the International Integrated Space Program Office (I2SPO) Board of Directors, led by Deng Ailun, will make the decision on behalf of humanity.

Menjie looked at the middle-aged woman standing next to him. It was his wife Tao Le.

Tao Le's expression remained calm as always, and he nodded slightly. "You go and notify them. I'll make all the necessary preparations. This data is incredibly familiar to me. You could say they are me, and I am them."

Menjie knew what his wife meant, so he turned and walked towards the office in the corner of the hall.

......

Two weeks later, in the oval conference room on the top floor of the monitoring hall, the brown solid wood circular conference table was filled with people.

The temperature on the surface of the earth is no longer suitable for human survival. Accompanied by the roar of major rocket launch bases, people who are willing to continue their lives in space are placed in carefully designed and strictly tested hibernation capsules. Like stacking building blocks, they are loaded into large space shuttles and space structures and fly to the distant orbit of Mars.

Those who have made up their minds to stay on Earth, even at the cost of their lives, are now experiencing a painful scorching heat. Some have already died, but many believe they will be reborn on Earth in another form millions of years later, just like the many species that existed on Earth before humans were born.

The monitoring hall is actually not located on the ground, but a nuclear-powered high-altitude flight platform (HAP, High Attitude Platform), like a fully functional air fortress, flying continuously and steadily at an altitude of 3,000 meters above the ground. In order to prevent being burned by the sun, it always flies on the side of the earth facing away from the sun, avoiding solar radiation.

In other words, from the perspective of the people in the monitoring hall, they are always in darkness.

However, this is a small price they have to pay for the ultimate successful implementation of Project Spark and Project Dandelion.

"...Dear directors, the I2SPO's final board meeting was supposed to have 39 members present, but only 27 were present. This represents just over two-thirds of the total number of people present, meeting the minimum number required for discussion and voting. The meeting can proceed normally..."

After the Secretary-General made a brief opening speech, he handed over the chairmanship of the meeting to Deng Ailun.

Deng Ailin glanced at his 26 colleagues without saying a word, his heart filled with emotion.

Indeed, this is the last board meeting of I2SPO. After the meeting, this international organization established decades ago to respond to the earth crisis will complete its historical mission.

"Everyone, the Spark Project is progressing as planned. Our compatriots are entering space in waves, and we no longer need to worry about them. The theme of our meeting today is the last important issue before the launch of the Dandelion Project: data cleaning principles. As everyone knows, the digitization of human civilization has been successfully completed with the help of Tao Le and the digital intelligence behind her. However, the amount of data is enormous. With our current technical means, it may not be possible to complete the transmission even within the life cycle of our various launch devices. Therefore, we need to streamline it, with the goal of reducing it to one ten-thousandth of the current data volume..."

Deng Ailin quickly introduced the background that everyone present knew, and then got straight to the point, first putting forward the views he had gained from immersing himself in these data.

Everyone held their breath. They knew that if any of these items were discussed and passed, it would mean that the data it excluded, as well as the traces of humanity over the past tens of thousands of years, would be completely erased.

Deng Ailun spoke his thoughts one by one in a slow voice. He felt that every word he uttered was of great weight.

"...Finally, I want to express that within this data, there's a lot of data on government agencies and violence related to national borders, a lot of data on ethnic and racial hatred, and a lot of meaningless video surveillance data. I believe all of this should be streamlined. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors envisioned the beautiful ideal of 'Great Harmony Under Heaven,' but until humanity was forced to flee Earth, it remained unrealized. Now, at the digital level, can we attempt to accomplish such a transformation?"

Deng Ailun ended his speech with his last point.