Reality Programming Association

Chapter 63: Chapter 26: Audio, Blueprints, Code

She stood in front of Yu Xian, leaning over to look at him. ”However, since you remember that process, you’d better not try it a second time. Even if it doesn’t affect your nerves, it could still damage your memory and psyche.”

Yu Xian nodded. ”Thank you for telling me all this, Senior Sister.”

He put his laptop back into the sealed bag, then into his backpack. Suddenly remembering something, he added, ”Senior Sister, there’s one more thing.”

Yang Yiyi, who was rubbing her calf, looked up.

”Please don’t tell Shi Zuozhou about what happened tonight,” Yu Xian said. After a moment’s thought, he explained, ”You know his personality. If he finds out, he definitely won’t be able to resist trying it. The risk is too high. I don’t want him to be a guinea pig.”

It was enough for him alone to taste the despair of that white room.

Yang Yiyi fell silent for two seconds. Seeming to recall Shi Zuozhou’s blustery demeanor, she nodded. ”Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about tonight.”

”Thank you, Senior Sister.”

Without further ado, Yu Xian opened his umbrella and walked Yang Yiyi back to the entrance of No.7 Dormitory Building.

”The boys’ dorms for the School of Physics are also in the South District, right? Take your time and be careful on your way back,” Yang Yiyi said, looking at the heavy rain outside with some concern.

”Yes, Senior Sister, it’s in the South District too. Very close.” Yu Xian forced a smile.

Only after watching her figure disappear into the stairwell, the motion-sensor lights flickering on and off floor by floor, did he turn and walk into the rain.

The North Campus dormitories were on the complete opposite side of the JCU campus. Separating them were the teaching buildings of several schools, a large artificial lake, three small plazas, and numerous basketball courts and parking lots. Usually, there were shared bikes on campus, but in this weather, he could only rely on his own two feet.

The puddles on the road were much deeper than when he had first come out; in some low-lying areas, the water had already flooded the sidewalks. Although his thick-soled hiking boots were waterproof, the resistance of stepping into the muddy water still left him feeling sticky and damp. It was pitch-black all around. Only the red aviation obstacle lights atop the distant laboratory building blinked through the curtain of rain.

After walking for about twenty minutes, he finally passed the ginkgo grove along the road and spotted the high-rise buildings of the North Campus.

Building 3, North Campus.

This building looked much grander than their old dormitories in the South District. It was said to have been donated by a famous alumnus to commemorate his lost youth spent sweating in a dorm without air conditioning. The lobby was brightly lit, paved with marble tiles, and equipped with facial recognition turnstiles at the entrance.

Yu Xian stood downstairs and took out his phone to text Wen Xiao. ”I’m here, downstairs.”

Less than two seconds later, his phone vibrated. ”Wait for me, coming right down!”

In less than two minutes, a DING chimed from the turnstiles as the elevator doors slowly opened. Wen Xiao, wearing a cartoon-printed down jacket, was bundled up like a sticky rice dumpling.

”Yu Xian!” She jogged over quickly. ”How are you soaked all over! The rain is so heavy...”

”It’s nothing.” Yu Xian stomped his feet to shake off the muddy water on his shoes. ”There’s a new development in the smiling suicide cases, so I rushed over.”

”Okay, let’s go upstairs to talk.” Wen Xiao seemed to care a lot about this matter too. She scanned her face to pass through the turnstile and motioned for Yu Xian to follow her into the elevator.

Yu Xian froze for a moment and quickly said, ”Can I go in? Isn’t this a girls’ dormitory? We can just talk in the lobby.”

”It’s fine, this is a coed building. Come on in.”

It was his first time learning that JCU had coed dormitories. He followed Wen Xiao through the turnstile passage.

”This building is for master’s and doctoral students, just like renting an apartment outside,” Wen Xiao explained as she pressed the button for the 12th floor.

Yu Xian nodded. Discussing such sensitive topics in the lobby was indeed inappropriate, but wasn’t going to her dorm room equally inappropriate? Didn’t girls’ dormitories have private and sensitive things lying around?

The elevator stopped on the 12th floor. The corridor was spacious and bright, lined with a dark gray carpet that absorbed all sound. A faint scent of lemon aromatherapy drifted through the air. Was this how graduate and doctoral students lived? But why was Wen Xiao, an undergraduate, allowed to live here?

Wen Xiao led him down the hallway to a glass-walled room at the very end. It was a public lounge furnished with fabric sofas and round tables. Against the wall sat a vending machine and a microwave. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, they could see the pitch-black rainy night outside, the city’s myriad lights blurring into glowing halos through the downpour.

”At night, everyone is holed up in their dorms. There’s no one here, so it’s a good place to talk.” Wen Xiao pointed to a sofa set in the corner, gesturing for Yu Xian to sit.

Yu Xian breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, they weren’t going inside Wen Xiao’s dorm room, otherwise the psychological pressure would have been a bit too much.

”By the way, when I was coming downstairs just now, Shao Yiyi kept asking if it was you.” Wen Xiao tugged at her down jacket. ”That girl insisted that since she hasn’t seen you for a few days, today would be a good time to talk to you about the birth chart reading she did...”

She glanced at Yu Xian’s expression and asked tentatively, ”I didn’t tell her what it was about, just that you were looking for me urgently. What do you think... should I call her over?”

Yu Xian shook his head almost immediately. ”Don’t involve her,” he said firmly. ”Wen Xiao, this matter runs too deep, and it might even be dangerous. The fewer people who know, the better.”

He thought of the eerie smiles on the victims’ faces and the white room that still filled him with lingering dread. This danger needed to be contained to the few people already caught in the web; it couldn’t be allowed to spread any further.

”And don’t tell Shi Zuozhou about tonight either. I’m afraid he might get dragged in too.”

Wen Xiao seemed startled by his solemnity and nodded blankly. ”Okay, I understand. I won’t tell her or Shi Zuozhou what we talked about.”

Yu Xian took his laptop out of the sealed bag and placed it on the table. He glanced around to ensure there were no cameras in the small cubicle, though he wasn’t entirely sure what harm a camera would even do.

”Wen Xiao, I came to find you for two things.” Because it was getting late, he cut straight to the chase. ”I participated in an experimental project called ’TDI,’ which stands for ’Targeted Dream Incubation.’ This project uses audio to pull a conscious person into a dream space. I suspect the smiling suicide cases are related to it.”

Wen Xiao sat up straight, blinking in bewilderment. ”TDI? Dream incubation? Is it... a game?”

”Not a game. It’s an MIT experimental project.” Yu Xian opened his laptop and showed Wen Xiao the TDI official website. ”I tried it once and found some things that weren’t quite right, which is why I came to consult you.”

The glow of the screen illuminated their faces as he opened the TDI dream incubation audio. That eerie snippet of Schoenberg’s Op. 25, distorted and layered with white noise, echoed through the small cubicle.

Wen Xiao unconsciously leaned a little closer to Yu Xian.

Pointing at the 45MB audio file, Yu Xian frowned deeply. ”This is the ’login key’ used to induce the dream. And its requirements are incredibly strict. It must be played from the very beginning. It cannot be interrupted or skipped. Even a message vibration on your phone in the middle will ruin it. If it’s interrupted, you have to start it all over again.”

Wen Xiao stared at the waveform on the media player, deep in thought. ”That sounds... If I didn’t know you were talking about a piece of music, I’d think you were describing the execution of code.”

”Code?”

”Right,” Wen Xiao pondered aloud. ”Think about it. Normally, if you’re watching a movie, fast-forwarding a few minutes doesn’t really affect your ability to understand the plot. Some people even skip ahead if they feel the pacing is too slow. But what if you’re installing software or running a script?”

She extended a slender finger, gesturing from top to bottom. ”Modern scripting languages like JavaScript or Python must be read and executed in strict sequence, from the top of the code to the bottom. If you skip any parts in the middle, it throws an error. Early magnetic tapes and film reels were the same—they’re called ’sequential access media.’ Their data must also be read and parsed in an exact, unbroken order.”

Her tone carried a hint of uncertainty. ”The more I listen to you, the more I feel that the way this audio is used behaves exactly like running a script.”

Yu Xian’s mind reeled. Senior Sister Yang Yiyi’s earlier words suddenly echoed in his ears.

”This audio is like a ’map’. When the hippocampus in your brain emits sharp wave ripples—that is, when the brain is preparing to consolidate memories—it forcefully inserts a ’blueprint’, deceiving your brain into constructing a dream according to this ’blueprint’.”

Didn’t Wen Xiao’s ”code” and Yang Yiyi’s ”blueprint” mean the exact same thing?