Cyber ​​Ghost Record

Chapter 12: Twelve Days
In the dead of night, the Gobi Desert is desolate, with ancient beacon tower ruins lying prostrate under the new moon, and the saline soil seems to be covered with a thin layer of frost.

Scattered among the gravel are faded fragments of Han and Tang dynasty pottery; sea buckthorn and poplar trees grow among the rusted railway tracks of the industrial era; and on the distant sand dunes, the microwave array of a wireless transmission station reflects the moonlight.

Sug gazed at the scenery, the campfire crackling in his ears.

A saying from 1,200 years ago resonated with him.

[If we consider things from the perspective of change, even heaven and earth cannot last for an instant. If we consider them from the perspective of permanence, then both things and I are without end.]

His chaotic mental state was gradually soothed by a vast and peaceful sense of tranquility.

During his time at the security bureau, he found that such scenery brought him a brief moment of peace.

This was the eleventh time he had used this method to regulate his mind.

He carefully savored this feeling.

A second later, a voice rang out from the sky:
"Your brainwave deviation rate is high; anchoring failed this time."

He sighed, and that wonderful sense of tranquility vanished instantly.

……

Suger removed his gaze.

The room was dark. He was wearing only his underwear and sitting on a blue-gray flannel sheet. On the table was a flat, disc-shaped mind anchor trainer, surrounded by a ring of purple indicator lights.

"Let me repeat the key points of the training."

He opened the heavy curtains behind him that almost completely blocked out the light.

It was already eight o'clock in the morning. The morning light of Yingchuan City shone through the window and could only faintly illuminate this fifteen-square-meter apartment. Paper and pens were neatly stacked next to the consciousness anchor training device, and some photos were pasted on the wall. The last one was marked with the date [7/10].

This is his 12th day living in the Luyingting Apartment in Fuxue District, Yingchuan City. Just like when he was working in his department before hibernation, he still uses pen and paper to save and record information.

He got up, walked into the bathroom where it was difficult to even turn around, and turned on the shower.

Amidst the sound of water spraying, the training device on the table played a tutorial.

“A consciousness anchor is an anchor point between the spiritual realm and reality.”

"Its essence is brain waves of a specific frequency."

"When a user's neural relay is invaded and interfered with, causing them to fall into a hallucination from which they cannot escape, the user can send out a consciousness anchor to forcibly cut off the brain-computer interface's power and return to reality."

"To ensure the safety of the consciousness anchor, the receiver's brainwave deviation rate is required to be no more than 2%, and for high-risk occupations, the brainwave deviation rate is required to be no less than 0.3%."

"To facilitate training, we recommend that users use visualization techniques or a strong emotional state to stimulate brainwaves of a specific frequency."

"Users can also practice meditation, Zen meditation and other spiritual practices to ensure that the influence of noise is eliminated when activating the anchor of consciousness."

"Analysis of your eleven training sessions shows that your training results are not ideal."

"The standard for passing the training is to generate brainwaves with a deviation rate of no more than 2% for three consecutive times at one-hour intervals. Your current best performance is far from meeting the standard."

"Currently, you are using visualization techniques, but the equipment you are using can only simulate sight and hearing, which is insufficient to provide a stable and realistic visualization environment. We recommend that you use more diverse sensory simulation equipment..."

Suger dried his long hair with a towel, walked out of the bathroom, and turned off the analysis on the trainer.

He turned around, and his body was clearly reflected in the mirror on the wall.

His muscles, which had atrophied due to hibernation, had clearly recovered a lot, and his originally pale face had regained color.

"Compare the changes in my body."

After he finished speaking, another semi-transparent phantom of himself appeared on the mirror.

That was how he looked 12 days ago when he first moved into the apartment; his long hair was messy and his chin was covered in a beard.

But the biggest change between the two was not his body but his expression. Twelve days ago, he unconsciously frowned, and his intense eyes were like a wildfire, almost neurotic.

He had always thought he was hiding his emotions quite well, but now he realized that he had actually been expressing them so obviously.

At that time, he was extremely wary of everything, even the smallest things.

But these days he just rides those crisscrossing vacuum tracks every day, wandering around like a headless fly.

There are no homeless people under the overpasses of this vast city, no prostitutes in the dark alleys, and no drug addicts in the bars.

No one paid attention to him, and even the general did not reappear.

If we really can't find a way, we'll have to go to the Six Desires Heaven again.

Suger took one last look at his body, then turned and opened the dry cleaning cabinet.

He put on his underwear and a gray spandex short-sleeved shirt, sat on the edge of the bed, and equipped himself with a half-body exoskeleton.

He fastened the straps to his foot, then unfolded the artificial muscle woven from chitin and carbon nanotube yarns, pressing the electromyography capture layer on its inner wall tightly against his calf.

In the same way, he put the other parts of the exoskeleton on his knees, hips, and waist.

Finally, he put on a pair of black trousers.

In this era, the control over equipment with a high level of danger is very strict. His assistant originally only recommended that he buy a flexible exoskeleton for light movement assistance. He used some questioning techniques and said that he had a need for extreme sports, so he spent 2200 to buy this half-body exoskeleton that is said to be able to adapt to a variety of extreme outdoor environments.

After getting dressed, he sat down at the table and began to eat.

The reason I say "eating" instead of "dining" is because the plate still contains the same pale pink, mushy substance.

This processed food, whose proportions are dynamically adjusted according to his physical condition, actually tastes quite good, but he has been eating it repeatedly for half a month since he woke up in the Security Bureau.

Productivity was high in this era, but the market had almost lost its demand for natural foods. He longed for a meal of stir-fried pork with chili peppers, steamed sea bass, and several bowls of white rice, but the exorbitant prices made him hesitate.

He simply shoveled spoonfuls of the porridge into his mouth, chewing mechanically while swiping the air screen on the table to browse the products.

He quickly found a voiceprint jammer, made some minor adjustments to the casing, and placed the order.

Most companies in this era no longer sell physical goods; they only sell designs.

Once his order is paid for, the nearest public printing station to Luyingting Apartment will materialize the virtual goods within ten minutes and deliver them to his doorstep via drone delivery.

The changes in society fascinated him, but he had no one to share his experiences with.

He suddenly wondered if his parents would have another child after he went into hibernation. If so, he might still have relatives in this era.

He finished his food in a daze, put away his plate, put on the black hunting jacket by the bed, and put his notebook and pen into his pocket.

As he reached the door, a deep sense of weariness washed over him.

It is already foreseeable that this trip will also be fruitless.

Take a day off.

Thinking this, he pressed the button next to the door.

A ceiling panel descended, supporting three layers of storage compartments.

He took out a monocular vision device from the bottom storage compartment, put it on, and then fastened a one-way light-transmitting breathing mask, completely blocking his facial features and jawline, before opening the apartment door.

He used a one-way transparent mask to prevent his face from being recognized, and the monocular vision was a measure to guard against demons and monsters like the general.

This allows him to see reality clearly, and also to observe illusion.

However, the field of vision is very unpredictable when wearing this device.

As he left Room 21 on the 15th floor, his left eye saw that Lu Yingting was shrouded in darkness, and the pool next to the old exercise equipment in the atrium had been dry for a long time.

But his right eye saw a bright morning, and in the other half of the pool, the Bodhisattva's face was as white as jade, and sweet dew overflowed from the vase in his hand.

Reality and illusion overlapped in the center of his vision.

He walked in this chaotic boundary.

It's almost mid-July, which should be the hottest time of summer, but the city's central cooling system makes the sunless lower floors of the city even cooler than in late autumn.

The wind howled between the skyscrapers. Su Ge turned up his collar and headed for the elevator. He walked slowly, adjusting to the dizziness brought on by the strange vision. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a dark shadow out of the corner of his eye. Turning his head, he saw a black cat perched on the ivy-covered eaves of the 14th floor of the North Apartment Building, gazing up at the sky.

Suger stopped and noticed that it was staring at the 16th floor of the west-facing apartment building where he was.

He tiptoed to the edge of the corridor and peeked out.

Half of a bird's nest was visible above the edge of the eaves, its broken basalt fibers and branches haphazardly interwoven.

The sound of flapping wings came from the nest, and a pearl dove was startled and flew away.

Suger looked at the black cat and saw that it was still focused on maintaining its original posture, so he breathed a sigh of relief.

All black cats are the same. This guy reminded him of his pet before he went into hibernation. He had brought it from downstairs in his apartment complex when he was in high school and had raised it for twelve years.

"Hegel?"

He couldn't help but call out the name he remembered to the black cat.

The black cat glanced at him from afar, then turned and jumped into the apartment building.

His hopes of finding a partner were dashed.

A voice suddenly came from upstairs: "Who are you calling?"

Suger didn't react for a moment, as if it was surprising that there were other people in this apartment building, even though he had long observed that logistics activities here were actually quite frequent.

He leaned out of the window and saw the people talking upstairs.

Her forearms, wrapped in off-white sleeves, were draped over the windowsill, and her right thumb and forefinger held the blue filter of a cigarette.

Suger couldn't see her face, only the dark red glow of the cigarette butt in the dim light.

"You're asking me?"

More than ten days had passed, and this was the first time someone had spoken to Su Ge. He couldn't help but close his right eye. In his real vision, her forearm was still resting on the windowsill; she was a living person, a resident upstairs.

The right hand holding the cigarette was pulled back into the corridor, and then a wisp of smoke drifted out.

"Well."

“Nobody.” Sug turned his gaze away. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

"Oh."

She responded with a sound of agreement and said nothing more.

Socrates thought she had lost interest in chatting, but then she said:
"You seem to really like going out."

"You know me?" Su Ge looked up again in surprise, trying to see her face clearly.

“Everyone knows you.” She chuckled, a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “You’re like a sitting duck.”

"What do you mean?" Suger asked warily.

“Instead of running around all day in those awful exoskeletons, you might as well just tell people, ‘I’m a hibernator,’” she said.

Suger was speechless and looked down at his lower body.

"Who sold you this?" she asked.

Suger then realized he didn't know what his assistant's name was. After hesitating for a moment, he said ambiguously, "Virtual assistant."

"Oh." She understood immediately. "That artificial intelligence."

"I can't buy anything else."

"Yes, for safety reasons, that's how it is. But if you wear it outside, that would be really unsafe."

Socrates heard a different meaning in her mockery—she had a source of goods.

"Do you have something better?" he asked.

There was no reply from upstairs.

“I can afford it,” he added.

A few smoke rings drifted out of the upstairs window.

"Buy me a drink, and I'll tell you."

"Now?"

His answer was the sound of footsteps turning around upstairs.

"Take off that thing before you go out; you're obviously a sucker."

……

Suger walked into the narrow alley between the high-rise buildings, passing through cardboard boxes and black garbage bags, carefully avoiding the glass shards and silicon nitride fragments on the ground.

The walls were covered with graffiti in a mixed style. A Vitruvian Man was depicted with chakras, and many marigold petals were piled up under the skull. Various languages ​​were mixed together in a mess. He saw half of the phrase "The Way is heard in the morning," but the other half was covered by another line of blue highlighter graffiti and replaced with a Latin phrase: veritas vos liberabit—True knowledge leads to thy freedom.

The narrow alley was blocked off by barbed wire, and the residents upstairs were standing by a brick wall.

Her temperature-controlled gray trench coat cast large shadows under the light, and beneath her titanium-white short hair, her emerald green eyes resembled duckweed on a lake.

The brick wall opened, and she went inside.

Suger followed, and the humid, hot air hit him in the face.

Even in the right eye's field of vision, this place was shrouded in dim light, with an atmosphere similar to that of the Six Desire Realms.

He visited other bars in Yingchuan City and only saw a few scattered customers sitting in sensor pods, receiving modulated neural data.

But here it's like a 21st-century bar, with men and women everywhere in the booths and at the bar, their skin reflecting the ambiguous lighting.

The smells of sweat, hormones, and alcohol mingled together.

Suger felt like an oddball.

But after observing for a while, he realized that no one was paying attention to him.

"A glass of Ascension." She sat down on the red and white sofa in the booth, ordered a glass of wine with practiced ease, and then glanced at Su Ge, "Give him a glass of water."

The waiter checked the drinks and left; he was both a cyborg and a real person. Service robots could do a better job, but places like this need employees who can turn a blind eye to illegal activities.

"Don't you have a brain-computer interface?"

She glanced at the monocular lens peeking out from the edge of Suger's mask, flicked a cigarette, and lowered her head to bite the filter.

In the dim light, the flames that shot from her fingertips illuminated her face.

"Hmm." Sog looked around at his surroundings. "Where is this place?"

She looked at me with a knowing look.

"A bar."

"That ascension..."

“This glass of wine can give you a million sensory experiences, not just taste, but also sound and touch.” She looked at Suger with regret. “It’s a pity you can’t drink it.”

"That was not what I meant."

Suger pondered for a moment, then realized he might have encountered a bar scammer of this era.

How much per cup?

"Don't you have the money?"

She exhaled a puff of smoke with a half-smile.

(End of this chapter)