The Supreme Wisdom felt like it had seen a ghost.
And as soon as it had this thought, it couldn't help but start adjusting its own threads, because ghosts were a thing unique to Earth, and it was even using English vocabulary; it must be contaminated.
But if a word had to be chosen to describe the current situation, then that would indeed be it; as it described it that way, it even dressed its mechanical shell in a suit: light-weight decorative fabric with a checkered tie, looking like a Playboy going on vacation in Italy.
Wait, what is Italy again?
The Supreme Wisdom couldn't bear it any longer and shut off its monitoring of the council chat group. The content inside had become nothing but memes and spiritual pollution. Keeping it open served no purpose other than contaminating its knowledge base.
Someone is bound to think, after so many years of interstellar internet development, shouldn't it be far more advanced than the human internet? Aren't there supposed to be all sorts of memes and abstract jokes already?
But in reality, two of the Three Great Empires are mechanical civilizations, and one is purely an artificial intelligence group, leading the entire cosmos to lean toward seriousness and efficiency, rather than associative and divergent thinking.
Robots hate abstraction the most; their logic can only describe the real world. Although some robots have developed a capability similar to associative thinking, it's actually fake—a combination of numerous program errors; they cannot actively utilize this ability, therefore they cannot create decent jokes, let alone play with abstraction.
And because they hold significant power in discourse, those emotional beings dare not challenge them and must accept whatever they say. The interstellar internet's various rules are all set by robots; how lively can it get?
Although they do have things similar to memes, using an image to express feelings, it's very primitive, kind of like when the little yellow face first appeared on the internet, let alone the meme wars and the age of abstraction.
Although the Shi'ar Empire consists of emotional beings, it is, after all, the lowest of the Three Great Empires and does not hold strong discourse power. In order to maintain its position, it had to compromise with mechanical lifeforms—its long-standing ban on art for thousands of years is actually a product of compromise.
Although after Charles married the Queen of Xiea, the ban relaxed somewhat, how much time has passed since then? At most, the nobles have developed some artistic culture, far from reaching the degree of interstellar popularity.
Simply put: when it comes to the development of popular culture and abstract culture, the human race is undoubtedly the cosmos' number one.
After all, they are a rare wild civilization, located in a remote area, under no one's jurisdiction. Although there is a Lord of Asgard above them, most of the time, they are left alone; no one supervises, so they grow as they please, eventually growing into the abstract form they take today.
The fact is that emotional beings are very abstract, especially when God created humans, all using the same template: just from the body structures of the interstellar council members, their average similarity to humans is about 70%. Don't just look at horns and tails; those are trivial details, but the brain's similarity is as high as 90%.
This means they can fully understand the internet culture created by humans seamlessly, and because such things were rarely done on the interstellar internet before, upon the first encounter with such abstract jokes, they found it quite interesting, making some people even neglect their work, spending all their time researching how to connect to Earth's internet.
Fortunately, Strange had the foresight to enable the Earth Magic Defense Network to have network filtration capabilities, with JARVIS, the Great Deity, presiding over it, or else these aliens would be having too much fun to even think of going back.
Admittedly, the era of abstract internet is shocking, but it is indeed interesting, especially the short, quick, and fast way of expression, which is the best choice to stimulate dopamine; as long as there is empathy, going online is entertaining.
But unfortunately, the universe indeed has many electronic lifeforms without empathy, who completely do not understand what emotional beings are doing.
Admittedly, mechanical civilizations and electronic life have researched the internet very deeply. Whether building, maintaining, or expanding it, they possess exceptionally strong technology, otherwise, this interstellar internet wouldn't have come together; it isn't just crossing one or two light-years—it's spanning across the jurisdictions of the Three Great Empires, covering the entire universe.
But they have a purpose when going online; the existence of the interstellar network is primarily to serve warfare and social order: only by achieving zero-latency information response across the universe can orders be transmitted better. Otherwise, if something is seen somewhere, it might take tens of thousands of years to reach another side of the universe, by then the yellow flowers would be cold. Mechanical civilization has poured vast manpower and material resources into research to achieve today's advanced interstellar internet.
So they can't understand: what are these carbon-based creatures doing with their internet? We painstakingly created no-latency response and ultra-large bandwidth, and you're using it to transmit these meaningless garbage messages?
Fine, transmit them if you must, but must they pass through my mind too? The Supreme Wisdom almost suspected they were uniting to corrupt its thought library; those spinning laser cat memes were replicating wildly in all its threads, becoming the new generation of internet viruses.
The Supreme Wisdom thought about cutting the network off, but this is the headquarters of the interstellar council, cutting off the network here means the interstellar council really would stop working.
Right now, the Three Great Empires need the interstellar council; anything that could affect the council's work cannot be done; besides, once the network is cut off, it would also be difficult for the electronic lifeform like itself to function, especially if set up by that Hidden Behind-the-scenes Manipulator again, it would be a total disaster.
So even though the spiritual pollution was severe, the Supreme Wisdom could only bear it.
But as the saying goes, when you can't bear it anymore, you can bear it a little longer; after arriving at the office, the Supreme Wisdom discovered that the government work report it had requested to be submitted during yesterday's standing committee meeting hadn't been submitted at all, and not by any of the seven departments. Among the secretaries of these seven departments, only one was a carbon-based being, the young man from Sparta Star, all others were electronic lives, yet none submitted it.
If one or two people hadn't submitted it, the Supreme Wisdom would have been angry, but with so many not submitting it, it could only hastily call a meeting to ascertain what exactly happened.
Hurrying into the conference room, the Supreme Wisdom saw the row of suit-wearing robots and instinctively sighed inwardly before realizing it couldn't actually sigh, it must have been another program error.
"Everyone, sit down." The Supreme Wisdom asked straightforwardly, "Why didn't anyone submit the government work report requested yesterday? Was there an issue?"
Everyone looked at each other—well, this was more of an action from the relatively advanced electronic lives; the more straightforward ones already said directly:
"Sorry, Mr. Secretary General. I have completed the government report, but when requiring the minister's signature, my behavior and language analysis module had some issues, failing to understand the other party's refusal to sign. Presumably, some program error occurred, and I need some time for adjustment. I hope you'll understand."
Supreme Wisdom waved his hand to indicate for him to stop talking, and another more advanced robot spoke up: "He is right, actually all our reports are ready, but the minister refuses to sign."
"Why won't he sign?"
"Uh, maybe it's... they just don't want to sign."
"There must be a reason, right?"
"There is a reason, but I can't understand their reason."
Supreme Wisdom was even more puzzled and said, "What do you mean you can't understand? What exactly can't those fools understand? If they can't give a decent reason, just make them sign. Can't even do that?"
"The problem is, we don't know if it's a decent reason." The robot said with some difficulty, "We didn't even understand what he was talking about."
Supreme Wisdom was completely speechless, he said: "Then just show me the footage directly."
The robot pressed a few buttons on his arm and sent the morning's recording to Supreme Wisdom; he saw what happened in the Resources Department office this morning from the recording.
"Knock knock knock," the door was knocked; the secretary of the Resources Department walked up to the desk with the government work report and handed the papers to the Resources Minister who was playing on his phone; the Resources Minister put the phone aside, picked up the report, and clicked his tongue.
"This is the government work report that requires your signature."
"What do you mean by 'requires'?"
The Resources Department secretary was clearly taken aback, but being quite an advanced electronic life form, he didn't reply in a rigid manner, but said: "We need to routinely provide work reports every once in a while to explain the content of our recent work."
"But this doesn't detail the content of our recent work."
"Because recently we haven't done anything," the Resources Department secretary replied.
"This won't work," the minister waved his hand and said, "Other departments are vigorously pushing environmental work, how can our department fall behind? Do you want me to offend the councilman?"
"But we indeed haven't conducted any environmental work," the Resources Department secretary said, "The Resources Department doesn't play a significant role in the early phase of promoting environmental work."
"But we have to play some role, right?"
"We haven't played any role."
"What I mean is, whether or not we actually played a role, the work report needs to show that we took on some role."
"The work report shows our work; but we haven't done any environmental work."
"But this makes me look incompetent!" the Resources Minister said, "I don't care, just embellish it a bit, write whatever, make it look like I have some use; even if it means just going to the Ministry of Environment for a cup of tea!"
"I'm afraid I can't do that," the Resources Department secretary said, "The work report is a record of work logs; all content has already been recorded based on the actual work content, it cannot be modified."
"Then I can't sign it either!"
"But the procedure requires your signature."
"I said I'm not signing!"
"Not signing requires a valid reason."
"I'm not satisfied with this report."
"Where are you not satisfied?"
"Like I said, this doesn't reflect my ability," the Resources Minister glared at the secretary and said, "Don't you want the Resources Department to have more power? As long as we show our face in front of the Supreme Magician, both of us could benefit, why can't you figure that out?"
"Sorry, we need to methodically complete our work, be loyal to our duties, and shouldn't resort to deceit; if you want me to add uncompleted work to the work report, that's against interstellar law, I can't do that. Please sign."
"Temporarily not possible," the Resources Minister seemed completely helpless, placing his hands on the table, then speaking in English: "Considering that structural suggestions for some power and duty adjustments have not been reasonably placed within the appropriate scope of adoption and importance determination area, I will not be able to unilaterally affirm its truthfulness and accuracy at this moment; if the government cannot include some thoughts on virtual range and promotional needs work into the work report's record range, with all department heads proposing some entirely department-thinking good-natured work improvement suggestions earnestly, the head will also not be able to take on the big responsibility of affirming past work results and being responsible for this statement record. Understand?"