ecstasy

Ai Xi narrowed his already narrow eyes:

"Well, I'm more inclined to believe that your energy actually comes from an external source. Remember that Tesla you mentioned last time? The wireless power supply."

Doudou nodded rapidly. This was something he had originally said to Ai Xi:

"I remember, remember, the Tunguska explosion. I saw it described on TV in a very complicated way."

Ai Xi put down the parts in his hand and spoke more and more attentively, as if he was studying a difficult problem:

"There's still so much we don't know: like will you drown, or die from lack of oxygen?"

"Well, I might try that—using a heavy object to quickly lower you into the bay and then bring you back up again. Even if the water pressure doesn't kill you, the rapid change in pressure might destroy your internal organs."

"Or, change your mindset from trying to kill you to trying to seal you. That's also a solution."

Doudou, who was listening carefully, also had his eyes light up:

"Oh—yes. I don't understand that either! Summer vacation isn't over yet, so why don't we try it out and see what my weaknesses are?"

When Ai Xi heard the word "practice", he froze.

She suddenly reached out and grabbed Doudou's arm. Her face was full of seriousness, even the huge scar was tense. She turned her head and looked at the thick curtains that had been drawn:

"Of course not! That's all for now. We should never try to find your weaknesses again, nor verify our previous guesses!"

"I'm sorry! I shouldn't have talked about this. I was just saying I was happy, and I accidentally thought too much about it - ignorance is actually safer."

"You understand, don't you? You understand why you shouldn't seek verification of this."

Doudou was stunned, not knowing how to react:

"Huh? Why are you apologizing all of a sudden?"

But when he started to think, he immediately understood what Ai Xi meant:

"Oh, oh, oh! I get it! No matter who wants to deal with me, they don't have room for trial and error. They only have one chance. If they fail, I won't give them a second chance."

"By testing ourselves, we can help people eliminate a wrong option or provide a correct solution."

"If you spend a lot of money, manpower, and material resources, but still can't kill me—and instead end up being completely wiped out—this kind of loss is unnecessary; it's likely to be a losing business."

"So smart people won't touch me, and stupid people aren't much of a threat either."

Ai Xi suddenly raised his arms, covering his mouth with one hand and his pockets with the other; his voice sounded a little muffled:

"That's right—it's to deter bad guys. Don't help them eliminate wrong answers. It would be even worse if they happened to find the right answer. Who knows if someone will be watching when they verify it."

"No one has enough trial and error costs when facing you; this is the best! This way, you won't have any enemies - let's try to maintain this; this is safer."

Doudou looked at Ai Xi, who was trembling a little, and patted her back carefully:

"Oh, don't be afraid. I understand what you mean: don't worry! Then let's talk about something else."

So they talked about the upcoming "RoboCop 5", and grabbed the unfinished Dr. Tormentor on the table in their hands and danced around; "Almighty" was also a very popular cartoon among classmates.

Ai Xi rubbed the scar with the back of his hand and inserted the tortured doctor's arm into the shoulder latch. After gently twisting it, everything went smoothly.

"Here, the base set is ready. I won't paint it for you. I still don't know how to paint anything clearly, and the model airplane class didn't teach it."

Doudou carefully picked up the six-inch action figure by the waist and weighed it in his palm. Although it was just a skinny old man, this character was still quite popular:

"It has to be you, Ai Xi! I accidentally crushed the box of MG I bought earlier."

Ai Xi looked at the movable model in Doudou's hand, and a look of satisfaction appeared on his face. His scar bulged with smile:

"It's just a model, it's normal that you're not good at it; no one is perfect: no one is perfect. It would be strange to be truly perfect, right?"

Doudou held Dr. Torture and placed it on the cabinet beside him.

"I'm planning on participating in that city-level model airplane competition at the Children's Palace at the end of the year. I hope I don't come in last; that would be so embarrassing."

Ai Xi stood up and stretched. Then he nudged Dou Dou's waist with his elbow:

"What's there to be afraid of? The most important thing is to participate. At worst, after I win first place, I can just lend you the trophy to put at home."

The two of them sat in front of the TV and played Streets of Rage 2 together for a while - to be honest, Doudou doesn't usually like playing side-scrolling games.

But before that, Ai Xi came to help him finish the model, and Dou Dou couldn't find a cartridge that allowed two people to play on the same screen - he usually bought single-player games such as role-playing games: later, Ai Xi brought a copy of "Streets of Rage 2" to play together.

At noon, the sun shone through the veil of dark clouds, casting its warmth and making the city buzz with cicadas. Ai Xi and Dou Dou found some frozen food in the refrigerator, microwaved it, and after eating, they said goodbye and left Dou Dou's house.

She also wants to borrow videotapes from the provincial library; she likes watching basketball star Michael Jordan play basketball and plans to borrow this year's playoffs to watch.

-

After leaving Doudou's house, Ai Xi took out her small notebook from her backpack and wrote a line on today's date with a red three-color pen:

[August 19th: Helped Doudou assemble a model and played Streets of Rage 2 with him.]

She turned her head again and looked at the gap in Doudou's window--

Through the small space in the corner, I could see Doudou still sitting cross-legged in front of the TV; and the model I had assembled for him was neatly placed on the cupboard.

Ai Xi's eyesight is amazing. Even though she often read borrowed books under the covers with a flashlight since she was a child, she still has no signs of myopia.

This not-so-big booklet is Ai Xi's notebook or memo.

Originally used to record homework assignments, daily moods, and free time reflections, I don't know when it started to contain a lot of things related to Doudou: words, pictures, and even rough sketches with numbers and scales.

Conjectures, emotions, observations, and records of their trips together; the A6-sized notebook was filled with everything about Doudou's specialness, and a lot of the content was about Doudou's superpowers that she had discovered.

Ai Xi walked out of Tianhu Community and tore off the piece of paper he had just written.

She folded it once, again, and then tore it into long strips; the scars on her face were burning and itchy in the sun, but she had no time to care about it.

She looked at the scraps of paper in her hand and crumpled them into a ball. As Ai Xi walked, she wanted to find a trash can on the side of the road.

But when she was about to throw the paper ball away, Ai Xi stopped. She weighed the paper ball in her hand: and the booklet she had been writing in for a long time.

It was torn into pieces, but not impossible to restore; it would even be easy for Ai Xi to spend a little more time.

Strictly speaking, while it was Ai Xi's notebook, the content wasn't about her. It contained a lot of information about Dou Dou from the time she'd known her: it was probably the most detailed information about Dou Dou ever, perhaps not even "one of the" details.

"Well."

Ai Xi exhaled lightly, shrugged, and put the paper ball into her mouth. She chewed it carefully with her big teeth, letting her saliva soak the paper ball; when it was soft and soft enough that she wouldn't choke, she swallowed it.

"Memory bread. Eat it and you'll never forget it. Memory bread. Eat it and you'll never forget it. Memory bread."

The paper balls stuffed in her cheeks made her mumbling unclear.

It tasted terrible: the notebook had been sitting there for a long time, and the paper had a damp smell. The texture was raw and rough; the tip of the paper cut my lips, and swallowing it made me want to cough.

She pressed the notebook against her forehead. The things written in it were not just embellishments of ordinary life; memories were precious treasures, and friendship was even more so, transcending everything.

But now, it is more likely to be turned into a weapon against one's friends.

Then, the contents can no longer be retained - although Ai Xi will always keep the memory in his heart.

She opened the notebook and tore off another page, this time tearing it into smaller strips to make it easier to swallow; she put it in her mouth like other students eating spicy strips from the canteen.

Passersby, sweating, looked at her sideways, but Ai Xi was busy chewing. By the time she reached the library, she had finished her meal.

She put the rest of the notebook—the cover, the back pages, the unused white paper—back into her backpack.

She knew that summer vacation was about to end.

And I will never open this notebook again.

(End of Volume 1: Dysplacement of the Mind)

Crab leader Li Xiaoxiu~! The support of Crab friends~

Chapter 93: Remote Caves in Burundi

At the turn of the century, the term "network promoters" gradually entered the public eye. In an almost eerie way, they were influencing the entire world.

"The Salt Angel of Lake Assal", "The Living City", "The Colossus from Outer Space", "The Weeping Dragon". The amazing stories that have become familiar to readers in recent years are all driven by the invisible push of Internet promoters.

But no one could have imagined at that time that this huge conspiracy spanning two centuries actually started in a cave in Africa.

-

Excerpted from the July 2006 issue of Parapsychological Exploration [A Web within a Web: The Shocking Mystery at the End of the Century].

-

At the end of August 1996, Professor Shiba, Imaginary Number, and Alice No. 8 landed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and crossed into Rwanda by minibus. They then headed south, crossing the border on foot in the darkness of night, and arrived at their final destination: the small and impoverished African nation of Burundi.

Here, they rented a van for transportation.

The dirt road seemed endless, almost like Sisyphus pushing a stone. The rolling hills on either side were covered in banana trees; locals, their skin gleaming like obsidian, rode bicycles with bananas strapped to their rear racks.

"There are still seventy kilometers to go."

Professor Shiba shook his head, his lips cracked and his beard even rougher. He was exhausted from the bumps on the dirt road, his fingers gripping the tattered leather on the steering wheel: his serious face looked nothing like a dog.

Alice 5 was still retching, her voice like the howling of a monster. Her paper bag was nearly full, and her glasses were fogged up by the heat. She looked up, tears from the retching swaying in her eyes.

"Professor, please stop driving with one hand. Will carsickness kill me?"

[Imaginary number] hugged his knees, squatting in the back seat, his weight swaying back and forth from the soles of his feet to his heels. His face, covered in acne, flushed red:

"No, of course I won't die immediately."

"But you could get dehydrated and have electrolyte imbalances. Your autonomic nervous system would be disrupted, with an imbalance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity, which could trigger existing heart disease. Add in the dizziness, and you could bump into the glove box and—"

Deng!

The van crossed another raised rock hill and stuffed the rest of the words back into his mouth.

"Wow!"

Alice Five's cheeks puffed up, and she buried her head in the vomit bag again.

-

Although they have known each other for many years, it was their first time meeting in person the day before yesterday at N'Djili International Airport in Kinshasa, Congo.

It's like pen pals. After meeting each other, you realize that each person's appearance is different from what you imagined; but their connection is closer than that of pen pals.

Because the three of them are all wizards of the "Tower Wizarding Society" -

Although the name contains "wizard", this is not an organization that studies the mysticism.

In fact, the vast majority of the members of the Tower Wizards come from four universities: UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford University, and the University of Utah.

Researchers, professors, students studying for bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees – the members have another thing in common, and it is the most important thing:

Before the ARPANET project was terminated by the US military, they all logged into the world's first electronic network through the mainframe computers of their respective institutions.

The second world: a man-made world, a world of links and wonders composed of characters. Sometimes, human creations represent humanity better than humanity itself.

So, after the ARPANET was completely shut down, most of them became initiators and supporters of the [Link Revival Movement] - committed to re-promoting the development and utilization of the Internet.

These strange and incomprehensible code names were once the nicknames they gave themselves on the ARPANET.

But nowadays, the "Tower Wizarding Society" is no longer just a leisure club established by a group of nerds to enrich their spare time and play fantasy games together.

-

The sun was so bright that it looked pale, like a hole burned in the sky by a cigarette butt; there was not even a cloud in sight.

Alice No. 5 rolled down the car window and, amidst the dust rising from the dirt road, consulted the map. The corners of her mouth held the yellow sheen of bile.

"Are we.going.to be.late?"

Imaginary Numbers remained squatting on the seat, untying and then tying his shoelaces, then untying and changing the knot:

"So what if you're late? The Wizarding World is just a mascot, being used as a target. And you're talking about a superior status? It just sounds good, at most it can trick those other people into voting for you."

The Tower Coven wasn't the only group trying to advance the internet; it was simply the first and most prominent. And that meant a lot.

Even for network promoters hidden in letters and communications, seniority represents status and can determine the direction of many things.

After finishing his complaints, he didn't get any support from his companions. He was still furious:

"You should fly directly to Bujumbura's capital airport - taking such a long detour only arouses suspicion."

Professor Shiba Inu gripped the steering wheel tightly with one hand, trying to avoid any obtrusive rocks. His beard obscured his features, blurring them into a blurry shape.

"Wizards will be watched too closely. There's no need to take risks. If someone is following you, try to get away as much as possible."

"We're fine on our own. But if we accidentally expose the identities of the [Big Spiders], we won't be able to afford the loss."

Xu Shu exhaled from his nostrils and snorted: