The Decaying Dream of America: I Assemble Corpses and Confront Madness

Arthur's fingertips stopped at the edge of a rusty inspection cover, the cold metal seeming to carry a corrosive malice in the chill of the night.

It was some kind of accumulated industrial grime, rough and with an extremely fine granular feel. Arthur could even sense the frenzied industrial ambition of the Cold War's peak, which had been forcibly sealed away decades ago.

This place was a standard product of the U.S. Department of Defense's underground fortified defense plan around 1955. Its design was essentially to maintain a certain abnormal social operating logic even after the outbreak of nuclear war.

These facilities are typically buried under layers of clay and gravel several feet thick, and their architectural logic follows extreme pragmatism: heavy concrete, complex reinforced structures, and underground passages that are always hidden from view.

Arthur withdrew his hand and wiped the reddish-brown crumbs between his fingers from the folds of his canvas trousers on his thigh. The crumbs had an eerie, dry texture in the dim starlight, like dehydrated blood specimens.

According to declassified files that Isabella stole from the deep archives of the "American Dream" headquarters, the underground tunnel known as "G-12" was originally designed to have a lifespan of only forty years and was supposed to be completely sealed with cement before the turn of the century.

However, these temporary, massive buildings, once abandoned, often become perfect breeding grounds for illegal expansion by certain conglomerates due to their exceptional structural stability and unregulated, secluded locations.

At this moment, the entrance was completely covered by an unusually thick layer of ivy. The roots of these plants were a deep black color after drying, and they were unusually thick. They powerfully squeezed into every gap in the metal, acting as a kind of natural and strong adhesive.

Arthur lowered his body, his gaze sweeping over the wildly growing vegetation. He noticed that along the edges swept by the flashlight, a faint purple glow was faintly flowing through the veins of the leaves.

This is a typical mutation caused by residual heavy metals in the soil and the leakage of some unknown unnatural energy, or even a biophysical mutation caused by damage to space.

"Are you sure this is the place? The location signal jumped twice during the 3D reconstruction." Lina's voice through the earpiece had a gritty quality caused by low-voltage charge interference, making her usually calm voice sound somewhat anxious.

Arthur didn't answer immediately. He slightly raised his mask, greedily and cautiously sniffing the unique scent in the air—an intuition he had cultivated over many years as a top investigator—scent never lies.

A stream of air, a mixture of stale grease, damp mold, and extremely faint ozone, was slowly seeping out from the cracks in the rusty iron. The ozone smell was incredibly fresh, as if a thunderstorm had just passed.

This is a typical residue left behind by an ionized cleaning robot. In the security protocols of Finch Labs, this technology, which uses high-voltage discharge for physical space sterilization, is listed as the highest-frequency defense mechanism.

This means that although the iron gate in front of you is rusty and even covered with poisonous vines that can conceal its presence, its internal electronic logic gating system is extremely active and has even just performed a self-check for 'microbial contamination'.

The stark contrast between this extremely advanced core and its utterly outdated outer shell caused Arthur's skin to tighten, a feeling of unease lurking at the throat of a behemoth.

"The specific frequency band provided by Isabella matches perfectly, with a slight oscillation around 2.4 GHz. That's their heartbeat," Arthur replied in a low voice, making a standard downward thrust gesture with his hand in the air.

The team members quickly spread out in a fan shape.

Lina nimbly crouched down, the modified terminal on her wrist—the monster pieced together from various black market parts—was now emitting a cold, rapidly changing phosphorescence.

The CPU she used was a Texas Instruments military-grade model that had been illegally modified on the black market. Its clock speed was forcibly overclocked using liquid nitrogen cooling technology, and its data processing capability was almost dozens of times that of similar civilian devices on the market.

Even with such powerful performance, when the terminal attempts to access the residual energy flow below, known as the "cleaning protocol," the small fan on its back still emits a high-frequency hum that is almost screaming.

Lina's fingers flew across the touchscreen, weaving a decryption network of red warning symbols and green binary code. She had to find the unique dormant aperture without breaking the opponent's self-healing logic lock.

"Damn it, the decay rate of this energy fluctuation shows that the cleanup process just ended thirty seconds ago, and it still left a lot of static electricity in the air." Lina looked down at the screen, her pupils shrinking to the extreme due to prolonged concentration.

"From God's perspective, it's not just like they're clearing the way for us uninvited guests, but more like they're deliberately sending a signal to some kind of deep predator." Ava's voice came through the satellite relay station at 30,000 feet, her arrogance and composure overseeing the whole situation carrying absolute confidence in this high-stakes gamble.

Arthur let out a low, cold snort, the sound muffled and disdainful beneath his icy tactical mask. He slowly and skillfully drew his revolver, most of its blue paint worn away, from its quickdraw holster at his waist.

The cold glint of the gun barrel intertwined with his hard facial features; in this world filled with high-tech deceptions, this most basic mechanical structure could provide him with a kind of psychological anchor.

"Who cares what's behind it? In my logic, anything that can still be pierced by a bullet isn't a real supernatural force." Arthur's voice was hoarse, like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

Lina took a deep breath, turned to Arthur and made a confirmation gesture, indicating that the first layer of inductive shielding protocol had been successfully injected into the system's redundant channels.

Arthur took the long-handled crowbar handed to him by a teammate. This manganese steel tool, which had been hardened by multiple quenching processes, was his first choice for infiltration because it did not produce any detectable electromagnetic signatures.

As his arm muscles bulged, the iron plate that had borne the weight of more than half a century and had long since become one with the base emitted a protest sound similar to a muffled thunder, and the dried mortar between the iron plate and the stone wall fell down like raindrops.

A staircase extending into the endless darkness was revealed through the gap beneath the iron plate; it was made of cast iron with the anti-slip paint peeling off.

A stench far stronger than that of the outside world, a complex stench of some kind of biological tissue that had been forcibly carbonized after decay, hits you. This smell seems to have a sticky texture, penetrating straight into your pores.

Arthur was the first to leap into the dark crevice, his movements surprisingly agile for a veteran. The slight echo of his combat boots striking the ground reverberated through the long, dark network of pipes, sending a chill down one's spine.

The underground maintenance tunnel is only three feet wide, and the extreme sense of oppression constantly induces a kind of claustrophobia. Countless complex pipes are intertwined all around: thick cast iron drain pipes, thin cables wrapped with shielding mesh, and some conduits with an unknown luster and an outer layer of bio-resin.

Some broken wire joints were emitting irregular arcs of blue-purple light, which left white marks on the retina, making the road ahead seem even more unreal.

Lena slid down close to Arthur's back, her movements rhythmic and precise. The instant they landed...

She then activated the specially designed composite sensor array on her chest.

The device, which looked like a huge electronic disk, was originally used for monitoring deep-sea mines, but she forcibly modified it into a "distortion compass" to detect the instability of the real dimension.

"Arthur, be wary of this air. The detectors show that this place is filled with hydrogen sulfide and some kind of extremely high concentration of volatile sedative ingredients." Lina almost pressed the terminal against her mask to see the wildly fluctuating charts.

"According to the internal procedures manual of 'American Dream,' this is a chemical isolation barrier called 'Sweet Sleep.' Even a concentration of only 1 PPM can render a strong adult man unable to breathe independently within three seconds," Isabella added emotionlessly over the communication channel.

Behind the rusty pressure relief valves on the side walls of the passage, faint hissing sounds emanated continuously, as if a thousand venomous snakes were lurking in the shadows, spewing these deadly fragrances.

Arthur made a simple tactical hand gesture to activate internal breathing circulation. With a soft click, the rhythmic, dry rubbing of the filters inside the team members' masks became their only guarantee of safety in this silent, deadly place.

They moved stealthily and sinisterly through the dark pipes, resembling a string of black viruses burrowing deep into the intestines of their prey. The metal grating footboards beneath their feet, corroded over the years, emitted an extremely piercing, creaking sound with every step.

"Keep the rhythm, resist those auditory hallucinations." Arthur's voice rang out in a low voice within the squad. This oppressive environment itself was a form of psychological warfare against their mental will.

Lena was controlling a tiny six-legged robot called "Hummingbird," which was rapidly climbing up the slippery pipe wall. Its electronic compound eyes flashed a pale green light, transmitting images of the complex physical barriers ahead back to Lena's tactical goggles.

"Attention! A cross-deployed infrared sonar trap has been detected 15 meters ahead. It's a classic tripwire from the old days, but its sensing accuracy is extremely high," Lina warned in a low voice.

The image transmission unfolded in everyone's view: on what appeared to be nothing, several almost transparent high-strength polyethylene nylon lines intricately stretched out a grid of death, with the ends of the lines connected to old-fashioned anti-personnel radar mines that had become extremely unstable due to corrosion.

The eerie rusty red color appeared particularly striking in this environment. However, as the 'Hummingbird' conducted a more detailed scan, the results were perplexing: the safety pins of the sophisticated radar had long since rusted shut inside the chamber due to moisture, making it clearly a collection of dead devices.

"The traps are malfunctioning; they look like they haven't been maintained for at least ten years," Lina sighed.

But Arthur's pace showed no sign of slowing down. In this treacherous underground world, the failure of physical traps often indicates that a more efficient and "penetrating" defense system has replaced them.

Deep within the passageway, on those massive cast iron walls, symbols that defied any industrial norms began to appear frequently, as if they had been forcibly carved out of the metal by some sharp fingernails.

The symbols were twisted and grotesque. Under the dim tactical light, it was vaguely discernible that they were some kind of sacrificial graffiti with religious connotations. The lines still contained dried, dark red biological grease.

This symbol appears repeatedly in the residual images left behind in Finch's laboratory. It is regarded as a sign that the real world has been contaminated by memes due to excessive experiments, and it has the function of depriving ordinary people of their rationality.

Arthur forced himself not to delve into the meaning of the symbols, focusing all his will on finding the connection point to Finch's laboratory.

"Ava, everyone's pulse is too high. The electromagnetic interference here is starting to distort our sense of time." Lina rubbed her temples in pain.

"Go deeper, Arthur. According to the satellite micro-fluctuation data I've been monitoring, you've entered the cooling zone of some kind of massive underground condensate, the heart of Finch's laboratory." Ava's tone remained that of a ruthless operator.

After turning a sharp angle, a huge, radially distributed pneumatic valve appeared before everyone, with a dark yellow, viscous substance slowly oozing from the valve's axis.

Arthur gestured to Lina to use the acoustic jammer to take control of the area. In this extremely quiet environment, any metallic scraping sound could trigger a chain of acoustic alarms, attracting the company's deployed "cleaners."

Lena bit her lower lip and carefully took out a can of high-pressure aerogel used for deep-sea rescue, slowly spraying it into the gaps of the metal hinges. This material can solidify instantly and completely absorb physical vibrations with frequencies below 30000 Hz.

The entire process was so quiet that you could almost hear the pumping sound of blood flowing through the arteries.

However, the moment the heavy isolation gate was slowly pushed open, the scene behind it made everyone hold their breath—a hellish landscape that even the most insane nightmares could not simulate.

The once orderly metal pipes and cable trays have disappeared, replaced by a disgusting, biologically-like "activated tissue".

The black pipes were covered with a substance that resembled both fungi and some kind of shell. They undulated rhythmically, and with each expansion, they spewed out a dizzying stream of warm, bloody vapor.

This bizarre technology, secretly named "Organized Industry" by the company, actually uses biomass left behind by Outer Gods to brutally assimilate the physical environment, turning the entire space into a semi-digestive system of a massive organism.

The sound coming from inside the pipe was no longer the hum of the pneumatic motor, but rather a swallowing sound and a low growl, similar to that of a giant beast in deep sleep.

"The equipment is completely frozen! Damn it... the space here is completely messed up, we're like walking through a maze!" Lina growled uncontrollably, her face pale, her fingertips almost burned by sparks from the screen's electrical leakage.

Around this "reality collapse point" where physical constants are completely distorted, all of humanity's technological accumulation seems so pale and powerless.

Arthur stopped before the reinforced door, covered in a thick membrane of flesh and studded with irregularly shaped geometric metal wedges. The three wedges emitted a chilling, purplish-black light that sent shivers down the spine, their nested dimensional logic shifting every second.

As the purple light made contact with his retina, Arthur felt a surge of fear, like a torrent, trying to overwhelm his sanity: the screams of countless test subjects sacrificed by the American Dream Corporation, the desperate echoes of souls exhausted as batteries.

His bone marrow seemed to resonate with that frequency, emitting a chilling ache. He saw clearly that behind the door was not a core laboratory, but a "nightmare furnace" composed of fragments of human will, frantically healing and expanding.

At this moment, Ava and Isabella's voices turned into disordered white noise, the connection was completely severed, and this cursed underground space refused to output any information.

Just as the heavy door slightly shifted open due to physical interference, a dark light, surpassing any color in the spectrum, burst forth, stretching Arthur's figure into an extremely thin and eerie shape.

The air seemed to freeze at that moment, leaving only that whisper that seemed capable of dissolving everything, echoing deep within everyone's minds.

The author "Old Alley Postman" recommends reading "Rotten Dreams of America: I Assemble Corpses and Face Madness" using the "Renren Bookstore" APP. Download and install it.