It's just like the memory data of a mobile phone. If your Redmi K70 is broken and you go buy a new one,
it's undoubtedly not the original phone,
but when you transfer the data to the new phone via a USB port, they look similar and have the same data, so it effectively becomes your original "old phone"!
Quite the cyberpunk concept, just like V and Johnny Silverhand. I'm familiar with this—data replacement...
To resurrect her daughter Eva, Miranda began her experiments, venerating the Mold Lord as the black god and establishing a local cult belief—
Miranda used the mold to heal the injuries of several villagers and preached in the local church,
claiming to be the prophet of the black god.
Coupled with the mold's subtle way of altering thoughts, many villagers abandoned their Christian faith
and began to worship the black god, revereing Miranda as Mother Miranda. Thus, a new heretical cult was born.
Uh...
To be honest,
did Mother Miranda really never run into Sadler? This familiar propaganda ritual, this familiar method—it's exactly like the Plaga parasite of The Illuminados.
Both used the mold and Plaga parasite to heal pain and display divine power, then used them to control the mind,
subsequently gathering followers.
I really wonder if these two cult leaders ever met. After all, competing for followers in the same territory of Spain must have made business quite difficult.
In the following decades, Miranda conducted research and experiments on the mold in underground laboratories located in the village and the ritual grounds.
One of the experimental results was a parasite called the gift.
This was a type of nematode that mutated after being infected by the mold. As part of her research, villagers from all walks of life—from peasants to aristocrats—were implanted with this parasite.
However, the vast majority of experiments ended in failure.
The subjects either died or turned into low-intelligence Lycans. The villagers who became Lycans were driven out of the village by Miranda so that the remaining townspeople could be kept alive for future research.
While implanting the parasites, Miranda intended to observe if there was a suitable vessel to resurrect her daughter, Eva. Because Eva was ten years old and female when she died,
Miranda's search for a vessel was arduous. Most teenage girls could not withstand the power of the gift parasite.
Most would die, while males were simply a mismatch.
Among them, the only female who could withstand the gift, Alcina Dimitrescu—one of the village's Four Lords—was unsuitable due to her giant stature, which caused Miranda great distress.
In the early 1950s—
Miranda, having failed to find an ideal vessel, decided to leave the village for a while. During her travels, she encountered a lost British medical student named Oswell E. Spencer.
The founder of Umbrella Corporation, Spencer, after seeing Miranda's vast knowledge, took her as his mentor and served as her assistant.
Spencer witnessed the miraculous effects of the mold and was deeply inspired, believing that substances like the mold could be used to achieve rapid human evolution.
However, Miranda did not have such grand ambitions; she only wanted to use the mold to resurrect her daughter.
Consequently, due to conflicts of interest and ideology,
combined with the high failure rate of the mold in transforming humans and its slow spread, Spencer soon parted ways with Miranda, without taking the mold or related data with him.
Despite this, Spencer still held Miranda in high regard, maintaining contact and viewing her as a friend and spiritual mentor.
Thus, when Spencer later discovered the progenitor virus in Africa,
he immediately notified Miranda. Spencer subsequently founded Umbrella Corporation to research the progenitor virus, and the Umbrella Corporation logo was derived from the crests of the "Four Houses".
From a certain point on, Miranda returned to the village and began disguising herself as an old crone, wandering the village to monitor the residents. Most villagers dismissed her as a madwoman and gradually lowered their guard.
In 2000, the bioterrorist organization The Connections approached Miranda. They had learned of her research and wished to collaborate.
Miranda provided them with mutated mold samples and human embryos created from Eva's DNA samples.
At that time, The Connections was working with H.C.F. on a human B.O.W. project that could brainwash enemy combatants, and they believed the mold could assist in the process.
With the embryos, they were able to produce many prototypes. Miranda herself oversaw the project's development. Eveline was the first "E-Type" they created sometime before 2014.
When the facility connected to Eveline was discovered during a BSAA investigation in October 2014, Miranda personally assigned Mia Winters and Alan Douglas
to transport Eveline across the ocean via a gas tanker. The tanker was subsequently destroyed off the coast of Louisiana, leading to the Baker house incident.
In early 2021, Miranda obtained information crucial to her goal. Eveline had been killed during a BSAA operation in July 2017,
but Mia Winters, who had been previously infected by the mold,
and her husband Ethan Winters had given birth to a daughter, Rosemary Winters. The Connections informed Miranda of the Winters' location through a leak in the BSAA...
Miranda believed Rose must be the ideal host for Eva
and immediately planned to kidnap her from the Winters' home. On Wednesday, February 3rd, Miranda instructed a villager named Eugen to bring her medical equipment and medicine.
On Friday, Miranda successfully kidnapped Mia
and tested her in the village. She also assimilated Mia's DNA to impersonate her,
then infiltrated the Winters' home. While she was posing as Mia, Ethan was completely kept in the dark, unaware of Miranda's true identity...
Nevertheless,
Miranda's infiltration was soon discovered by the anti-bioterrorism unit under the command of Ethan's close friend, Chris.
Chris had been investigating Miranda since the Baker house incident. He led his squad in an assault on Ethan's home.
Miranda was hit by bullets fired from outside the dining room window and was shot multiple times at close range by Chris himself.
Although ordinary firearms caused minimal damage to Miranda, she chose to play along with their plan,
so she decided to play dead,
easily deceiving Chris and his team.
Miranda was loaded into a vehicle along with Ethan and Rose. En route, Miranda attacked and killed the two soldiers in the vehicle, destroyed the car, and then fled back to the village with Rose...
This is roughly everything Mother Miranda has done so far.
It was madness. To go to such lengths just to resurrect a daughter... Even Lady Alcina Dimitrescu, who also suffers from porphyria and is unable to conceive or have daughters,
could take a few strange girls and fuse them with the gift parasite, eventually treating them as her own biological daughters.
In contrast, Mother Miranda's obsession was far too deep. One could say that all the consequences stemmed from her...
However, compared to Mother Miranda,
the most important thing is the power of the Mold Lord.
The only difference between the Mold Lord and a virus is that it no longer requires a physical body to sustain it. Viruses need flesh and blood cells to parasitize.
Everything requires the support of flesh; they are true carbon-based organisms. No matter how they change, they remain carbon-based. The mold is different.
Once infected,
the entire body is almost entirely composed of mycelium. It breaks free from the limitations of carbon-based life, achieving a sense of "flesh is weak, mold ascension".
Next is the Mold Lord space. This vast space, akin to the internet, is also very powerful. Besides creating and controlling others,
it can also store a massive amount of memory data.
It's like a large network website computer server, where a huge amount of data is gathered and stored, ready to be accessed at any time. This means you can create countless identical versions of yourself.
Even if you die, you only need to re-inject the memories into a vessel. Although this body isn't your original self, the memories are still yours.
Of course,
this involves a lot of perceptions regarding the soul.
Some believe that a soul is a soul and cannot be copied. Even if a copied soul is identical, it is still a duplicate.
Others believe the soul isn't so mystical; it's just a type of memory data. Like a phone's memory card, it can be removed and swapped into a new vessel at will.
In the world of Cyberpunk, to achieve immortality, Saburo Arasaka implanted his memory data chip into the body of his son, Yorinobu Arasaka, successfully taking over his body and resurrecting.
The situation with Johnny Silverhand and V is the same. Although Javier also feels that this method of rebirth would involve some estrangement and rejection,
believing that the resurrected self is just a clone,
and not the true self, there is no doubt...
that this is one of the closest ways to immortality. Therefore, he needs to try it. Even if it is only pseudo-immortality, it is worth an attempt.
Of course,
those infected by the Mold Lord can use the Mold Lord space network to control each other, much like network permissions.
Users with higher permissions can control those with lower permissions, just like Miranda and Karl Heisenberg.
Despite being one of the Four Lords,
he was still controlled by Mother Miranda. To escape Mother Miranda's shackles, he planned to team up with Ethan to topple her.
Therefore,
the Mold Lord actually has certain limitations, namely that it does not allow for the existence of someone with higher permissions than itself. The Mold Lord is a massive internet, and these infected people are the network's permission managers.
If one day someone with higher permissions appeared, wouldn't Javier be digging his own grave?
So, whether to become infected by the mold is something that needs careful consideration. Unless Javier can build an independent network space himself, he is unlikely to actively seek infection.
Just like Eveline,
she was a local area network herself, controlling others as the main entity and possessing her own hallucination space.
But overall, he should obtain a mold sample first. Javier does not intend to participate in the plot of Resident Evil 7's Baker Farm.
Because it's useless and has too many limitations,
Javier prefers to wait a few more years until Mother Miranda returns to the village before taking action. That would be the best time to strike!
Volume 10: Resident Evil Village, Vendetta - Chapter 3: animality virus
New York, USA
Inside the Biological Institute—
"mold?"
"What is that...?!"
Pulling back the lens, the leisurely Javier was still chatting with Rebecca in her Institute with great interest.
After all, she was one of his few friends.
Upon hearing Javier's words, Rebecca frowned deeply and murmured, seemingly confused by the term "mold".
"Yes, that's right, mold!"
"Hard to imagine, isn't it? mold can also become a bio-weapon. Although today's bio-crises are mostly caused by viruses,"
"but Rebecca... during World War II, bio-weapons were caused by poison gas and bacteria, so they were also among the original bio-crises. They just weren't as fast-acting as viruses."
"mold might one day replace bio-viruses as a new bio-crisis disaster. Just because it hasn't appeared doesn't mean it's impossible."
"Moreover, mold fits all the characteristics of a bio-weapon. It has minute mycelia, invisible to the naked eye, lives through parasitism and saprophytism, and can even transform into toxic substances. It also has chronic poisoning, carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic effects—all of which align with bio-weapon traits."
"We have to be on guard. Just like the Plaga parasite; initially, no one would have associated parasites with a bio-crisis."
"But the fact remains: once it can cause infection, it is a bio-weapon. That is an undeniable fact."
Seeing Rebecca's frowning expression,
Javier smiled slightly, lifted the coffee on the table, took a light sip, and explained calmly.
Chatting with an old acquaintance always made Javier feel very pleasant.
He didn't have many friends in this world; his former comrades from the S.T.A.R.S squad were among the few.
And watching everyone age day by day,
to be honest, Javier felt a selfish urge to give them the T-Virus serum with no side effects so they could all live long lives together.
Of course,
that was a selfish thought. Javier knew his behavior would be unethical.
So far, Javier had respected his friends' wishes. He could share the T-Virus with them for free, allowing them to live for at least 200 years,
and they could even wait until they were eighty to take it.
Javier could wait for them to change their minds, but he also respected their thoughts if they didn't want to keep living.