The Last 299 Days of Humanity

Yu Qing rubbed his throbbing temples. Yao Dan's hesitant concealment was like a tiny thorn stuck in his heart—not deep, but causing a constant, dull pain. He used some connections to investigate, but the information he received was like water sinking into the sea, failing to create even the slightest useful ripple.

With few clues at the moment, he had no choice but to suppress his doubts for the time being, locking them away in a corner of his mind and reminding himself to focus on the more pressing crisis at hand. All his energy was now devoted to the recovery of Old Chen's family.

Old Chen himself was curled up in the corner of the ward, his eyes cloudy, like an old tree that had been ravaged by a storm and then eaten by insects. He was slow to react to most of the external stimuli, and occasionally his lips would murmur, but he could only utter a few incoherent syllables.

Yu Qing dared not hope that he could quickly regain his vitality; it would be a blessing if he could maintain the status quo and prevent it from deteriorating further. Yu Qing was even more worried that Old Chen would have a mental breakdown; he was still terrified of his new life.

However, his two children were different. They had only just begun to understand the ways of the world, like flower buds wilted by a storm, but their roots were still intact. Therefore, in Yu Qing's view, they still had a great chance of returning to a normal life. With a little patient education and guidance, they could be molded into successful individuals.

Although fear still lingered in their eyes, and they were easily flustered like startled fawns, their eyes still sparkled with the curiosity and liveliness of new life when they looked at the birds flying outside the window or the new toys brought by the medical staff. This was something that brought Yu Qing some comfort.

The treatment of Mr. Chen's family took place in the closed and secure special care area of ​​Wengshan Hospital. The environment here was quiet and the security level was extremely high, with white walls and a faint smell of disinfectant forming the main theme.

At first, things seemed to be going well. With careful dietary adjustments and gentle psychological guidance, the children's complexions gradually became rosy, their thin cheeks slowly became fuller, and their appetites also recovered.

Their mental state had improved considerably; they were no longer so neurotic, and they even dared to cautiously reach out to Yu Qing when he visited, asking for the little trinkets he had brought. This small improvement allowed Yu Qing's tense nerves to relax for a moment.

However, just as Yu Qing was feeling somewhat relieved, the medical team's chief biology specialist, a humanoid woman, came to him with a perplexing report. In Yu Qing's makeshift office, she brought up a holographic projector, and a blue stream of data slowly rotated around her.

"Your Excellency, we found something in their blood samples that... does not belong to any known biological category."

She pointed to the brightly highlighted, tiny, dust-like, yet seemingly life-like, pulsating blue dots on the holographic projection.

"We'll call them 'displacement bacteria' for now. But they are not bacteria in the traditional sense; they don't produce toxins, don't trigger typical immune responses, and their structure is very different from any known pathogen."

"What is that?" Yu Qing leaned forward, staring at the strange spots of light, a sense of foreboding rising in his heart. He didn't quite understand the deeper meaning behind her words.

"Well, how should I put it... I only came to this preliminary conclusion after repeated testing and comparison of multi-dimensional data."

Qingluan's voice remained steady, but her speaking speed was slightly faster, revealing that the situation was unusual.

"These tiny structures can generate an extremely weak cooperative field signal under specific conditions, such as stimulation by a specific frequency of electromagnetic field or bioelectric signal. Their mechanism of action is similar to quantum entanglement, but their manifestation is more complex and they seem to be able to convey richer information."

She zoomed in on a simulation animation, where the points of light weaved through virtual blood vessels and neural networks, extending into almost invisible energy threads.

"They are like countless miniature signal relay stations, which can not only link themselves into a complex micro-network within a single host, but also cross physical distances to interact with similar structures in other hosts, forming an unimaginably large distributed system."

Yu Qing gasped in shock, exclaiming, "This is terrible! What if...we become someone else's puppet in some form? Or simply lambs to the slaughter, our lives not in our own hands?"

The thought of Old Chen's family, or even many others, possibly being in this situation sent chills down his spine.

“But the phenomena observed so far suggest that their purpose is not destruction,” the humanoid girl said, adjusting the projection parameters to display a microscopic simulation of the replacement of bacteria in contact with nerve cells. Her voice carried a hint of disbelief and emotion.

“Look here, their behavior pattern is more like… ‘symbiosis’ or ‘replacement’. They are slowly, systematically, and almost politely replacing nerve cells in biological tissues, especially neurons in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus.”

This is a...silent 'usurpation,' an organizational substitution achieved through technological means completely beyond our comprehension.

This discovery sent a chill down Yu Qing's spine, and cold sweat instantly soaked his inner shirt. A terrifying hypothesis quickly took shape in his mind, growing ever clearer:
The residents of the Seventh Paradise may also be caused by this thing, rather than simply disappearing. Instead, under the activation of some preset signal, the replacement bacterial network in their bodies instantly completed the transfer of dominance over them, as if all nodes were activated simultaneously at a command.

Their consciousness was then uploaded or integrated into a vast, undetectable collective network, while their bodies, like precision instruments disconnected from their power source, lost their internal drive and fell into an endless, vegetative-like dormancy.

This is no longer a violent kidnapping in the traditional sense, but a meticulously planned and silent "harvesting of consciousness".

If this hypothesis is true, it means that every life on Earth could become fish on the chopping block of those behind-the-scenes manipulators, and could be stripped of its self at any time, becoming an unconscious node in a vast network.

This technology is a Damocles' sword hanging over the heads of all humanity, ready to fall at any moment, and ultimately it has led a select few technological elites to become self-proclaimed gods.

Danger was not far away. Soon after, Xiaoya and Daya also began to show synchronized abnormal symptoms.

They would wake up suddenly at the same time in the middle of the night, such as 3:07 a.m., covered in cold sweat, claiming that they heard "a faint singing voice". The melody was ethereal and eerie, and could not be described by any known scale, but it was deeply imprinted in their minds.

Even more disturbingly, in their separate psychological assessments the following day, they were able to describe the same scenes from each other's dreams with remarkable ease and detail:

An endless forest, composed of constantly flowing and changing brilliant light, where the veins of all the trees pulsate in unison, like a giant, living brain with a unified will, so oppressive it's suffocating. Even bread often becomes restless like them, dreaming at the same time every day, and doctors can't find any physiological problems.

Even more bizarrely, through special brainwave monitoring equipment (originally designed to study children's dreams), technicians were surprised to find that when Bread was asleep, his brainwaves exhibited a pattern that closely matched the light forest scene described by Xiaoya!

Sometimes, the bread would inexplicably emit a low, threatening whimper towards an empty corner, as if there were something unseen there.

"Their technology is probably still in the testing phase and is not yet perfect. There are obvious 'signal leaks' or 'side effects'," Yu Qing said in a deep voice during an emergency tripartite discussion with Dong Hao and the biological scientist Shu Qingluan.

Fine beads of cold sweat trickled down his forehead, which he wiped away from time to time. "Otherwise, given the infiltration and stealth of this technology, we might have already unknowingly become puppets, instead of observing such obvious abnormalities only in specific individuals as we are now."

The choice of pristine humans as test subjects is likely due to the high stability and universality of our relatively 'pure' genes, making them ideally suited as the 'basic template' and validation platform for this ultimate control technology.

But this is merely speculation based on limited information. They need solid evidence, they need to find the source of the invisible chain that is trying to bind everyone, and break it.

At the same time, we must also understand what the mastermind behind this is. Is it to establish a "hive" society of absolute obedience and loss of individual will in order to achieve some kind of totalitarian rule?

Or perhaps it's some mad scientist or organization trying to prove they possess the godlike ability to shape life forms and act as creators?

Or... do they believe they are using this extreme method to integrate the wisdom and resources of all humanity in order to cope with some unknown, enormous crisis that could destroy civilization, and thus they have adopted this cruel approach that sacrifices the individual?

Just as Yu Qing was mobilizing all his resources to investigate the replacement bacterial network and try to trace the source of the mysterious signal, Old Chen suddenly disappeared silently from the heavily guarded special care area of ​​Wengshan Hospital on a stormy night.

After reviewing all the surveillance footage, only one chilling scene was found:

He moved like a highly sophisticated automated machine, or a puppet controlled by invisible threads, his steps stiff yet incredibly precise along an unbelievable path, perfectly avoiding the sight of all patrol posts and the scanning range of motion detectors.

He eventually disappeared into the darkness at the entrance of a ventilation duct in the northwest corner, which was temporarily in a blind spot due to construction.

At the head of his hospital bed, an extremely complex, bizarre pattern resembling a neural network connection was drawn with a viscous, faintly bioluminescent unidentified liquid (whose composition was found to be highly similar to the metabolic products of the replacement bacteria).

The lines of the pattern seemed to be pulsating slightly, possessing a kind of life.

Old Chen's disappearance, and the eerie, suggestive pattern he left behind, are like a boulder thrown into a seemingly calm but actually turbulent lake, instantly escalating the entire incident and making it even more perplexing.

Was he not simply a victim? Was his blank expression a facade? Or was he being "summoned" by a stronger signal?

Or perhaps his consciousness was prematurely "activated" in the network for some unknown reason, triggering some kind of instruction that turned him into a "dormant agent" performing a specific mission?
Meanwhile, Yu Qing's humanoid maid, planted on the outskirts specifically to gather information, braved the rain to bring back a vague yet crucial piece of information:
According to some scattered clues from underground intelligence networks that are difficult to trace, there is a secret organization called "Vast Universe" in Qingtian City.

In recent years, this organization has been collecting cutting-edge research data on consciousness uploading, swarm intelligence, distributed neural networks, and biological quantum synergy in a very low-key yet efficient manner around the world.

“Qingtian City?” Yu Qing seemed to understand something. “Isn’t that…the place where my supposed aunt lives? Aren’t the people there always so eager to fly out of the Milky Way? Why are they getting involved in our mundane affairs…”

Despite numerous clues, none could be pinpointed, yet danger was closing in. Xiaoya and Daya's auditory hallucinations and collective dreams were becoming increasingly frequent, and sometimes they would suddenly become disoriented during the day, muttering to themselves.

The details of the "forest of light" in the dream became clearer and clearer, and a blurry figure with indistinct outlines began to appear frequently, but exuding a gentle yet firm guiding meaning, as if beckoning to them, or rather, extending an invitation to all the "infected" nodes.

Yu Qing realized that he not only had to race against time to find a way to break through before Xiaoya, Daya, and even Bread were completely assimilated by that unknown network and their consciousness was completely "uploaded," but he also had to face an opponent who was deeply hidden, had great ambitions, and whose technological level might far exceed that of the current public society.

And what is the true stance of Yao Dan, who is becoming increasingly secretive, seems to be hiding something from him, frequently goes out alone recently, and is often unreachable by phone?
Is she also connected to this terrifying "displacement bacteria" network, or to that mysterious "vast universe" organization?
"No, that's impossible. Yao Dan shouldn't have anything to do with this." Yu Qing shook his head vigorously, trying to dispel this terrifying thought.

He was more inclined to believe that she was hiding something simply to avoid upsetting him, or that she was investigating privately in her own way. After all, he was already overwhelmed with too many things, and internal distrust would only make things worse.

But deep within his heart, an unease spread like a vine. He began to doubt everything; even the slightest breeze became his enemy.

Standing by the window of his office on the top floor of Wengshan Hospital, Yu Qing felt a cold, unknown chill seeping in through the glass.

He seemed to see countless invisible threads of bio-energy reaching out from the city and even further into the darkness, precisely searching for their targets, silently coiling around every unsuspecting life, including himself…

"Who exactly are you? What do you all want? Perhaps from the moment humans began modifying their genes, the seeds of a life-or-death struggle between groups making different choices were sown." (End of Chapter)