Reality Programming Association

Chapter 30: Chapter 13: Parents’ ”Relics

The pile on the left featured an old-fashioned red velvet cover stamped with gold lettering that read, ’Golden Years · Photo Album.’ Its edges were slightly frayed, revealing the gray cardboard beneath. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Yu Xian picked it up and flipped it open.

The first page held a photo from his elementary school days. In it, he wore an ill-fitting uniform and a red scarf, smiling goofily at the school gate. Tucked beside it was a certificate awarded to ’Merit Student Yu Xian’.

Flipping further back, he found a picture of himself learning to ride a bike for the first time. The back of a young man was visible beside him, a hand steadying the rear seat. The further he turned the pages, the younger the Yu Xian in the photos became: earnestly doing homework with a pencil, lying on the ground playing marbles, crying about not wanting to go to elementary school, losing his first tooth... Even further back, Yu Xian could hardly recognize the little boy as himself: in kindergarten, just learning to walk, at his one-month-old celebration...

On the back of every photo, the date and weather were neatly written in fountain pen.

”August 10, 2007, Sunny. Xiaoxian can say Mom now.”

”December 20, 2011, Snowing. Brought Xiaoxian to see the snow for the first time.”

”June 25, 2013, Light rain. Xiaoxian cried over a bad final exam...”

The handwriting was elegant; it was his mother’s. Turning to the last page, he found a pale green piece of paper tucked into the plastic sleeve on the back cover. It was a medical birth certificate. Name: Yu Xian.

The rain pattered outside. Clutching the album, he sat quietly for a long time. It was a testament of love left behind by his parents. Yu Xian sniffled. He carefully pulled out the birth certificate and tucked it away safely, then closed the album and returned it to its original spot.

After taking a moment to collect himself, his gaze fell on the pile of items on the right side of the hidden compartment. It looked like a stack of bound printed papers with neat edges, held together by a black binder clip. The topmost document was stamped with a glaring red seal: INTERNAL TOP SECRET.

Yu Xian froze. His parents had been ordinary institute researchers who focused entirely on basic theoretical research. A top-secret document like this hardly seemed to match their status. He picked up the file. It felt heavy in his hands, and the paper had already started to yellow.

Looking at the English signatures, the first author was his father’s name, and the second author was his mother’s. His eyes slowly moved down and landed on the paper’s title. It consisted of several highly academic terms, printed in both Chinese and English:

*Research on the Vectorization Mapping and Storage Mechanism of Discrete Personality Based on High-Dimensional Topological Manifolds.*

”Based on high-dimensional topological manifolds... vectorization of Discrete Personality... mapping and storage mechanism...?”

Yu Xian read it twice, yet he still stumbled over the words. Even though he also studied theoretical physics and did research, he couldn’t comprehend the meaning of these terms when strung together. He recognized every character and roughly understood what each individual word meant, but combined, they left him utterly baffled.

He continued reading. The abstract stated: ”...This study aims to explore the transformation of human consciousness and personality traits into discrete mathematical vectors through high-dimensional manifold mapping... to achieve the digital storage and backup of human consciousness...”

What...? The digital storage and backup... of human consciousness?

He glanced at the completion date at the bottom of the paper: October 2016. Yu Xian’s hands stiffened. That was the exact year he was in the fourth grade of elementary school.

It was also that same year, on a dreary, rainy afternoon, when his homeroom teacher called him out of the classroom, wearing an expression that the young him couldn’t understand.

”Yu Xian, your mom and dad... got into an accident on the highway.”

A large truck had overturned, causing a multi-car pileup and a gas tank explosion. Nothing was left of their bodies. He had been too young back then. Only now did he realize that his homeroom teacher’s expression was one of pity. All this time, he had believed his parents’ passing was just a tragic accident.

But now, as he stared at the ’Top Secret’ document in his hands, an overwhelming terror wrapped tightly around his heart like a snake. Even though he wasn’t a researcher in this specific field, he could easily judge the sheer importance of this document’s research direction... and how it challenged, or even subverted, human ethics.

Cold sweat seeped from his back. Questions surfaced in his mind. He wondered if that car crash had really been an accident. Had it happened right around the time this document was completed? Were there really this many coincidental tragedies in the world?

Yu Xian looked up and surveyed the quiet bedroom. The cabinet stuffed with manuscripts, the hidden compartment concealed within, and this paper stamped with the words ’Top Secret’. All of this was like a massive, silent Pandora’s Box that had lain quietly beside him for ten years without his knowledge. He had originally thought he was just an unfortunate orphan, but now he realized that his life might have been shrouded in a massive shadow since a very long time ago.

Lowering his head, he forced himself to calm down. With his academic background, he knew that a study of this magnitude couldn’t have only involved his parents. The research institute, the project team, the funding sources... there had to be traces left somewhere. Rushing would only lead to mistakes; he needed to plan his next steps carefully.

Pressing his palm against the partition board, he gently pushed it down, and the wooden plank returned to its original position seamlessly. Next came the old newspapers and the disorganized pile of old manuscripts, followed by the stacks of notebooks and printed materials, which he placed back in their original order.

After doing all that, he packed the red velvet photo album and the top-secret paper into his backpack. He zipped it up. The backpack felt heavy. He looked around once more. The room was dim, everything exactly as it had been. He turned off the lights and left the apartment.

As the security door shut with a loud THUD, those sealed past events and memories were once again locked away in this old house. Outside the apartment building, the sky had turned completely black. The light from the streetlamps was torn to shreds by the torrential rain. Clutching his backpack tightly to his chest, Yu Xian ran toward the bus stop.

Meanwhile, in a girls’ dormitory at Jiangcheng University.

The sound of the rain outside was blocked by thick, heavy curtains. Given their high quality, these curtains were clearly not standard school issue. Under the warm glow of a desk lamp, a thread-bound book—which looked as thick as two bricks slapped together—was spread open on the desk, its pages covered in densely packed vertical columns of traditional Chinese characters.

”Yiyi, are you done yet?” Wen Xiao sat on the adjacent bed, looking at the frowning Shao Yiyi. ”You’ve been flipping through that for half an hour now.”

Ever since they returned from the sharing session on Wednesday, this stubborn girl, Shao Chacha, had insisted on dragging her along to ’trick’ Yu Xian. She claimed she wanted to help calculate how deep Wen Xiao’s destiny was with Brother Cos. After agonizing over it for ages, and upon the recommendation of Yu Xian’s roommate, Shi Zuozhou, she and Shao Chacha booked a table at the Kitty Restaurant by the school’s South Gate.

She had originally thought it would be a healing-themed restaurant where adorable kittens surrounded the tables, allowing customers to feed them while eating. She had even thought that fans of anime culture were surprisingly loving and that she had misjudged them before.

Who could have known... Whenever she thought about the pink bell headband she had worn that afternoon, Wen Xiao wanted to find a hole to crawl into.

Shao Yiyi sat cross-legged on her chair. One hand pressed down on the small notebook she had used to take notes at the maid cafe that afternoon, while the other quickly flipped through the thick book. The girl didn’t even lift her head, constantly muttering to herself, ”Twelve thousand eight hundred and forty... that’s right... Let me calculate it again...”

Seeing her best friend stare at those two lines of text for several minutes, Wen Xiao couldn’t help but lean in out of curiosity. ”What exactly... does it say on there?”

Shao Yiyi suddenly turned her head, giving her a start. Her friend’s expression was dead serious.

”Xiaoxiao, I have a feeling that Brother Cos wasn’t telling the truth this afternoon. Or... maybe he got the hour and minute of his birth wrong? After all, a lot of people aren’t exactly sure of the specific hour and minute they were born.”

”What’s wrong? Is there a discrepancy?”

”It’s not just a discrepancy, it’s... it’s way off!” Shao Yiyi looked like she wanted to find a better adjective, but hampered by her limited vocabulary, she had no choice but to repeat herself with heavier emphasis.

Wen Xiao’s heart tightened as she urged, ”Oh, stop keeping me in suspense! What does it say?”

Shao Yiyi pointed to the two vertical lines of traditional characters in the book. ”Look for yourself. These two fortunes... It’s my first time seeing them.”

Wen Xiao leaned closer, struggling to decipher the obscure words. She saw that they read:

”Brings misfortune to all relatives, separated from his own flesh and blood. With the Celestial Killer Lone Star ruling his fate, he is destined to walk this earth completely alone.

”A solitary star of sorrow, the White Tiger of calamity arrives at the door. Danger awaits those who draw near; tragedy strikes those who love him.”