Chapter 6
1971words
"Begin recording," she said quietly into the recorder on her collar, "Target A, shape is an irregular dodecahedron, surface smooth, spectral analysis shows... composition unidentifiable. No characteristics of any known elements or compounds."
She adjusted the analyzer's wavelength band and scanned again. But just then, the dodecahedron before her eyes underwent a subtle change. Several of its edges began to round off, and wave-like patterns appeared on its surface, as if it were transforming from a solid geometric shape into a semi-fluid gel.
"Target A is changing form," her voice was somewhat dry, "Conducting spectral analysis again... my God."
The data on the analyzer screen had completely changed. The previous "unidentifiable" reading had disappeared, replaced by a clear, definitive result—pure silicon. Like a huge piece of crystal cut into a strange shape.
Emilia refused to accept this. She switched to a different target, a huge, twisted Möbius strip. The first scan showed it as an "organic polymer composite." She merely blinked, and when she looked at the Möbius strip again, its color had changed from deep black to bright silver. She immediately scanned it again, and this time, the instrument reading showed pure titanium.
Her heart sank. She finally understood. It wasn't her instruments malfunctioning, nor were these structures changing. It was her act of "observation" itself that was defining what she was observing. Like the "observer effect" in quantum mechanics magnified to a macroscopic and terrifying scale. She wanted to use science to measure and define this place, but the place was instead using her "expectations" and "cognition" to determine what form it would present. Her scientific method had become a joke here, a continuously self-fulfilling paradox.
She let her arms drop weakly, looking at the constantly changing gibberish on the analyzer screen, feeling for the first time how inadequate her knowledge was. Her pride in rationality, in this pure and living ocean of "possibilities," was like a leaking wooden raft.
Meanwhile, Michael's situation was equally bad, if not more chaotic. As the team's military commander, he trusted order and command above all else. But here, both of these things had failed.
"Everyone, hold position, maintain formation! Engineers, check the pod systems and be ready to evacuate at any moment!" he issued his first order through the communicator, his voice firm and loud, trying to counter the surreal scene before them with discipline.
He saw the combat engineer beside him immediately nod, turn around and walk toward the pod. But something strange happened. The engineer's movements seemed to be stuck, he repeated the action of "turning and walking toward the pod" over and over again, like a piece of footage being played on loop. Michael watched as he turned around repeatedly, walked to the same position, then instantly flashed back to his original spot, only to turn again.
"Tom! What are you doing?" Michael rushed over, trying to grab him. But his hand passed through the engineer's body, as if it was just an illusion.
An echo came through the communicator, not the kind produced by electronic equipment, but something more bizarre, like overlapping voices from different times.
"...ready to evacuate at any moment!"
"...ready to evacuate at any moment!"
"...evacuate!"
His command seemed to be repeatedly executed at different points in time. He even saw another version of himself in the distance, with his back turned, issuing the exact same command into the communicator. He felt like his brain was about to be torn apart. He was a person who relied on clear instructions and immediate feedback to make decisions, but now, his instructions were being distorted, duplicated, delayed, and he had no idea which actions were real or which commands had been executed.
"Cease all operations! Everyone return to me immediately!" he issued a second, desperate command.
This time, the communicator was completely silent. The phantom of the combat engineer who had been repeatedly performing the same action disappeared. The geometric shapes around continued to rotate silently. His orders sank like a stone in water, as if they had never been issued. His entire command system, built on experience and discipline, completely collapsed in this moment. He gripped his rifle tightly—this cold piece of steel was the only reality he could feel—but he also knew that firing at these geometric shapes would be as meaningless as shooting at a mathematical formula.
On the other side, Whitney Lee's state had entered another strange realm. All the high-tech equipment she brought—data terminals, sensors, analysis software—malfunctioned the moment they entered this space. The screens showed nothing but static and garbled code. Without the support of data, she was like a person who had lost her eyes and ears, falling into complete panic and confusion.
She curled up at the entrance of the pod, hands covering her head, trying to explain everything with the scientific rationality that had been instilled in her since childhood. Spatial distortion? Multi-dimensional projection? But these terms seemed pale and powerless in this moment. In extreme fear and confusion, those things from childhood memories that had been suppressed by rationality for so long began to emerge uncontrollably in her mind.
She recalled the stories her grandmother had told her in the old house in the countryside, about "qi" and "fields." Grandmother said that some places had very special "qi" that could affect one's mind and spirit. She also remembered those Chinese ancient texts she had secretly read but never dared to admit she liked, where "blessed lands and immortal realms" were described as places isolated from the world, existing as their own separate domains.
"Don't look with your eyes, feel with your heart..." her grandmother's voice seemed to echo in her ears.
Xiao Wen inexplicably closed her eyes. She gave up analyzing with instruments and instead tried to perceive this space with her own "consciousness." At first, she couldn't feel anything, only endless darkness and her own intense heartbeat. But gradually, her chaotic thoughts subsided, and a strange feeling emerged.
She "felt" those floating geometric shapes. They were no longer cold, inorganic objects, but like giant, dormant clusters of consciousness. She could "sense" their emotions—an ancient, profound "curiosity" devoid of any human emotional coloring. They seemed to have developed a slight interest in these small and fragile carbon-based life forms that had suddenly intruded.
She could even "hear" the "voice" of the gigantic octahedron in the center. It wasn't a sound heard through her ears, but a pure logical resonance that emerged directly in her mind. It seemed to be saying: What... are you? Why... do you "think"?
Xiaowen's consciousness was being torn between science and mysticism. Part of her believed she was hallucinating due to extreme stress, while another part clearly felt she was engaged in the most primitive form of communication with a being far more ancient and advanced than humans. She unconsciously began to understand the other's "language" using a thought pattern that blended data streams and hexagram symbols.
"You... have no malice," she unconsciously murmured. "You just... don't understand..."
"Of course it has no malice."
A calm voice interrupted her dreamy muttering. It was Anna. This normally silent and reserved glaciologist now stood quietly among them, her eyes showing none of the fear and confusion of the others, only a sadness that seemed to comprehend everything.
Everyone looked at her.
"You... know what this is?" Michael asked hoarsely, as if he had grasped a lifeline.
"I don't know its name, but I know its nature," Anna's gaze swept across those slowly rotating geometric shapes, her tone as flat as if stating a fact. "My grandmother called it 'the Dream Weaver,' the village shaman called it 'the Shaker of Foundations.' In terms you can understand, it's a 'reality editor.'"
"Reality editor?" Emilia repeated the term, finding it both absurd and fitting.
"Yes." Anna nodded, "It's not a creature living in our three-dimensional space, nor is it an object. It is itself a pure consciousness that isn't bound by our physical rules. The way it thinks is by modifying reality. This space we're in now is a temporary folder it has 'edited' for us, a 'petri dish' for observing us."
Anna's words were like a bolt of lightning, clearing the fog in everyone's minds, yet plunging them into an even deeper abyss. If everything here was "edited" into existence, then what were they? A segment of code? A BUG?
"How do you know all this?" Michael stared at her vigilantly.
"Because I've seen it before," Anna's gaze became distant. "Deep in the permafrost of Siberia, there was a similar entity, though smaller and more unstable. It destroyed my hometown and my father's research expedition. I came here to confirm its existence once again."
Just as Anna was revealing this terrifying truth, that massive octahedron, that "reality editor," seemed to finally complete its preliminary "reading" of them. It began to make a more active "response" to their existence.
The surrounding space began to become unstable. Those geometric shapes that originally had clear contours now had edges that started to blur and melt, spreading outward like ink blocks thrown into water. The crystal ground beneath their feet also softened, feeling like stepping on viscous liquid when walked upon. The entire world was "liquefying."
"What is it doing?" Emilia cried out in terror.
"It's trying to understand us," Anna's voice carried a hint of despair. "It's analyzing our time... our past and future."
As soon as she finished speaking, various images began to appear in the liquefied space, like a broken kaleidoscope. Past, present, future—all boundaries disappeared, and countless fragments of time were chaotically mixed together, surging toward them.
Emilia saw the image of the transport aircraft landing overlapping with the image of her parents disappearing in an avalanche. She saw herself at ten years old, wearing mountaineering gear, running out from behind a giant dodecahedron, waving at her with a smile, while from her mouth, she was speaking about the spectral data she had just recorded.
Michael saw an even more terrifying scene. He saw himself exchanging fire with his comrades in the deserts of Afghanistan, and in the next second, those comrades' faces transformed into the members of the scientific expedition team, and the desert they were in became the ice sheet of Antarctica beneath their feet. He even saw a future version of himself, wearing this polar suit, lying motionless at the pod door, with a huge, still smoking hole in his chest.
What Whitney Lee saw was countless data streams intertwined with ancient Bagua symbols, like two giant serpents devouring each other, circling around her. She saw herself both wearing a white lab coat sitting in front of a supercomputer, and also dressed in ancient clothing, carving something on bamboo slips.
The entire space turned into a boiling porridge of time. Their memories, their futures, their fears and hopes, were all extracted by this enormous "reality editor," shattered, and then splashed like paint into this liquefied spacetime. They were no longer independent individuals, but had become materials used by this massive conscious entity to create its artwork.
Emilia reached out her hand, wanting to touch her childhood self running toward her, but her hand passed through an explosion of flames on a battlefield, ultimately landing on Whitney Lee's crying face.
Everything was in chaos. Their consciousness was being washed away in the flood of time, about to dissolve completely.
