“What the guy said… makes sense!”
After hearing ‘Dream Traveler’s’ words, Li Yao suddenly remembered that he had had a lot of weird dreams ever since he was a little kid—not just the T-rex who had put on lipstick, the yin-yang man who had a bright silver gun under his crotch, the pregnant woman who had given birth to two computers, and so on. In some of the other dreams, he seemed to be a middle school student who was sitting in a classroom taking a test. The question of the test was very simple, which was to write the full name of the words ‘England, Europe’, and so on. But every time, he would answer wrong, because the full name of ‘England, Europe’ was different every time.
Is it possible that there were almost ten different versions of Earth in my previous life?
Li Yao mumbled to himself, “But, why were the Dream Traveler’s previous life, past life, and past life in different professions while I was a middle school student in the dream?”
Li Yao continued reading patiently.
That was the end of the answer. But after two days, Dream Traveler changed the answer and added a few more lines, which seemed to be his response to the netizens’ comments.
“You all say that this kind of phenomenon is not strange. There has long been a reasonable explanation in science. It is called ‘feelings’. It is a small defect in the evolution of the human brain. When short-term memories are transcribed into long-term memories, there will be interference and confusion. Not bad. A perfect explanation.
“Including the question below—’What kind of supernatural events have you experienced?’, you’ve offered plausible explanations for all the answers. They are either coincidences, hallucinations, chronic memory confusion, or even mass hysteria. In short, you just don’t want to believe, or rather, don’t dare to believe, the existence of supernatural events. You can only bury your head in the sand named science and deceive yourselves.
“But has it ever occurred to you that the truth of the ‘feelings’ is not like that? What if the ‘previous life’, the ‘parallel world’, or the ‘reincarnation space’ really exists? What if there is a science on the scale of the universe that can completely cover the science on the scale of Earth?
“Humans are creatures who like to fool themselves.
“Even if countless people in this thread say with certainty that they have indeed encountered a supernatural event, you readers will not take it to heart at all. You will only blindly believe in the so-called ‘science’ and laugh at these ‘strange rumors’.
“True.”
“Whether they are awakened or not, whether they open their eyes or not, whether they can find the truth or not, destruction is inevitable.
When Dream Traveler wrote to this point, his pen was brimming with resentment.
The more Li Yao observed, the more serious he became. Thinking back to the weird things that had happened to him, he was even more suspicious about the authenticity of the world.
Then, it seemed that other readers expressed serious doubts about what Dream Traveler said, too. They were probably asking him, “If we are really living in the space of reincarnation, is everything, including ourselves, false?”
“I think, so I am.”
Dream Traveler replied, “We are human beings who are the spirits of all things. We are not pigs who are driven by our natural instincts. ‘Thinking’ is the only sign that we define ourselves and distinguish ourselves from everything else in the world. Even if we do live in an illusionary building in the sky, even if the earth below our feet is a beach that can be swallowed by tides at any time, and our civilization is a tower made of sand on the beach that is constantly collapsing and reshaping, our thoughts are real, and our lives are real, too.
“The tower can collapse, but even the surging tides tens of thousands of meters high cannot erase the fact that it once existed.
“On the other hand, even if I am an out-and-out lunatic and everything I say is nonsense, even if there is no such thing as reincarnation space or circulation of the Earth, even if the earth below our feet, the air we breathe, and the sun, moon, and stars in the sky are all real and the cells that make up us are also real, what if we give up our thoughts and dreams and become blindly obedient lambs, silent bricks, and ignorant pigs? What if we become a cold component on the social machine and are merely satisfied with the stimulation of our natural instincts? Are we really ‘alive’ then?
“Life or death, reality or illusion, it will always be a problem.
So much for the answer.
But Dream Traveler also left a few links that pointed to a few similar questions, including ‘Tell me about your weirdest dream’, ‘What have you experienced that made you doubt that the world is a fake or a bug’, ‘Have you ever come across any cases where ‘the gods are watching’, ‘What does the Yin-Yang Eye feel like’, ‘What does depression or schizophrenia feel like’, etc.
Li Yao flipped through the answers one by one.
As expected of the nation’s largest website for bragging and posturing, ‘Do You Know’ had a vast majority of thrilling and thrilling answers that were full of twists and turns. Its imagination was rich to the extreme. With just a little bit of editing, it was able to produce a series of very wonderful short stories. Li Yao couldn’t help but read them with great interest.
Under the question ‘What kind of supernatural events have you experienced before?’, many respondents had experienced telepathy with their deceased family members and even saw their deceased family members directly.
Some of them even swore to the heavens that there were really deities, eminent monks, and masters in their hometown who could communicate with spirits.
And below the question “What have you experienced to make you doubt whether this world is false or if there is a bug?”, the answers became all sorts of strange and bizarre, making one’s blood run cold when carefully pondering.
One of the answers left a deep impression on Li Yao.
The person who answered the question said that he was a member of a chain beverage store and liked to drink a beverage named ‘Lemon’s Ice’. The ingredients of the mixed drink included salted lemon and another mint lemon-flavored carbonated water. The pleasure of drinking a cup of it on a hot summer day was very stimulating. He had drunk dozens of cups of it in the store.
But today, he was soaked in sweat because of the scorching sun. When he went to the store to buy lemon ice cream, he discovered that there were no air bubbles or carbonated acid at all. It was like cold herbal water and couldn’t taste worse.
The main point was… when the respondent expressed his doubts to the shop assistant, the shop assistant told him that the chain store’s “Lemon Cheerful Ice” had always been mixed with salted lemon, pure water, and special herb packages. It had never been added with any carbonated drinks or sodas, so it didn’t have the slightest bit of stimulation. It focused on pure, natural, and healthy concepts.
At first, the answerer thought that the shop assistant was new or that the shop assistant had adjusted the process of making the drinks. But when he questioned the shop assistant, who was an experienced shop assistant, to the agents and trainers behind the chain stores, the answer was the same. Since the establishment of the chain store, every store in every corner of the country had the same process of making lemon ice cream. No soda or soda was added.
It was scorching hot with a temperature of almost forty degrees.
But the one who answered felt that he had fallen into an ice cave. A bone-chilling coldness was popping up from the back of his head.
“I’m a regular customer of this chain store. Over the past two years, I’ve visited this place at least forty to fifty times. Of the three times I’ve visited, I’ve ordered ‘Lemon Caltrops’ twice.”
“I remember clearly the picture of the bubbles bouncing on the lemon slices. I can feel their burning of my throat and their hissing sounds. Such a refreshing feeling is the greatest pleasure in a summer afternoon. Am I wrong about that?
“But it’s impossible for the staff to lie to me, and it’s even more impossible for the trainers in the chain store’s headquarters to lie to me. It’s true that they never provided the lemon ice cream that I remember!
“Is this a bug in my memory or a bug in the entire world? To this day, I still don’t know what is going on.”
Li Yao was dazed for a long time by the reply. He took a deep breath and continued reading the comments.
Then, he saw the comment of ‘Dream Traveler’.
“Maybe, you remembered it right, and the staff did not lie to you.
Dream Traveler said to the responder, “It’s not that your memory is bad. It’s just that your memory is too good. For some unknown reason, or rather… there is a bug in this world that has restored part of your memory cells to the state of ‘the previous life’ or ‘the previous version’.
“In your previous life, ‘Lemon Caltrops’ was indeed made with soda or soda. Maybe you liked the drink so much that it left a deep impression on your memory cells and lasted until ‘this life’. However, in this life, the Earth has undergone subtle changes in many details. For you, ‘Lemon Caltrops’ is a different approach.
“There’s no need to panic. BUGs often appear on our Earth. Look, 170,000 people have paid attention to this question. There are a total of 30,000 answers. Even if 90% of them are bullsh*t and only 10% are true, it also means that we have already observed 3,000 Earth’s BUGs, right?”
“My name is ‘Dream Traveler’. This is my personal page and my contact information. I often run into similar situations, too, and I’ve learned a thing or two about them. We can talk more about them if we have the opportunity!”
It was a new clue.
Li Yao entered Dream Traveler’s profile. The content was similar to what he had left on the Q&A website, except that it was more detailed.
However, his personal number was left on the bottom right corner of his profile page, too. He also welcomed calls from friends all over the country who were equally confused or had discovered a ‘earth bug’.
Li Yao stared at the number for a long time, hesitating whether or not he should call it.
—
The question “What kind of things have you experienced that made you doubt whether this world is false or if there is a bug” was a real question on the nation’s largest question-and-answer and posturing website. The person who had mixed the flavor of the lemon drink was also a real person. There was no way to release a link here, but if everyone was interested, they could search for it themselves. So far, there were indeed 30,000 answers, or in other words, 30,000 “earth bugs” had been discovered.
