Chapter 510

Chapter 510: Answer

Zhou Ming returned to his studio apartment. Everything was still exactly the same as when he had left.

As he stepped onto the familiar, slightly worn floor and looked at the things in the room that had never changed, he listened to the steady hum of the computer tower that was always on. His thoughts finally began to settle.

A subtle, hard-to-describe feeling rose in his chest. Zhou Ming stepped over the bits of clutter on the floor, walked to the tightly closed window, and looked at the rolling white fog outside.

He stared at the fog for a long time, then reached out and pushed the window. As expected, it did not move at all.

The flour scattered on the windowsill and the stack of empty cans he had arranged on purpose were still exactly as before. They seemed to wordlessly send him a lonely, silent message.

For a long time, he just stood quietly at the window, as if he were looking into the thick fog, though his mind was completely blank. He did not know how much time passed before he suddenly blinked and turned his head to the side, like a stone statue that had just awakened.

Beside the unmade bed, the computer monitor on the desk glowed faintly. The “Network not connected” message still popped up from time to time in the lower right corner. The notebook he had used for notes before leaving was still tossed in a corner of the desk. He had not opened it for a long time.

Zhou Ming walked over and sat down at the desk. He stared blankly at the empty screen for a while, then pulled the keyboard and mouse out from the corner where he had shoved them. He opened the browser and casually typed a line of text into the search box:

“Does the world beyond the fog still exist?”

Of course, the browser did not show any useful search results. After he hit Enter, the cursor blinked a few times. Then an error page popped up. The network connection was interrupted, and the remote server did not respond.

The result was within his expectations. Zhou Ming already knew this would happen. Long ago, when the fog had first sealed off the room, he had used this computer in its strange state to try every way he could think of to contact the outside world.

He did not expect anything different to appear on the screen this time.

He had only wanted to type that sentence out, not to ask anyone, and not expecting any answer.

Listening to the monotonous hum of the fan, Zhou Ming let out a breath, tossed the keyboard and mouse back into the corner, then picked up the notebook. He flipped to a blank page and bent over it to write carefully:

“To the world beyond the thick fog, greetings from the man in the room.

“Soon, I will arrive at a place on the ‘other side’ of the door. It is a city-state on the frontier, and I am going there to confirm a few things.

“But even if I do not confirm them, I think I already know the answer. On the strange world beyond the door, countless unimaginable things are really happening, and my ‘intuition’ over there has always been very accurate.

“Because of this, I no longer expect any reply from beyond the fog. I no longer expect anyone to pass through the fog and knock on my door or my window. I still cannot be sure what has happened to this world, but perhaps… it is not I who changed, but you.

“In my quiet, narrow little room, everything is still the way it used to be. Here I have a bed, a sofa, a coffee table, a desk, and a chair. My wardrobe stands beside the bed, and there is a large shelf as well. Most of the space on that shelf is still empty now…

“I have not cleaned this room for a long time.

“There is almost no dust here. I know that in human homes, more than half of the dust comes from flakes of skin that humans shed and from the wear and tear of daily life. Since I spend most of my time away from here, most parts of this room are still quite clean.

“But even without much dust, the room still looked a bit messy. The last few times I came back, I was always in a hurry, and I never tidied things up before I left.

“Leaving it messy all the time is not good. If everything really is as I think, then I feel… I should make this room completely clean and neat.

“Also, perhaps I should not say this. Perhaps these words are already meaningless, but… I hope all of you beyond the fog are safe and well.

“Goodbye. I am going to clean this room now.”

Zhou Ming let out a soft breath, tossed the pen back into the pen holder, carefully read over what he had just written, then closed the notebook and set it in the corner of the desk.

Then he stood up in silence and began to carry out what he had planned in the notebook, to clean and tidy the room.

He started with the slightly messy bed, folding the blanket and straightening the pillows and sheets. Then he moved on to the things on the desk, the things on the coffee table, then the wardrobe, the bookshelf, and the clutter on the sofa and floor.

There was not much dust, and he did not need to mop the floor. With a single sheet of paper, he wiped away the thin layer of dust on the surfaces of the furniture, then tossed it into the wastebasket.

At the very end, Zhou Ming stood in front of the window.

He silently looked at the things on the windowsill. After standing there for a long time, he reached out and put away the tools he had used in the past to try to force the window open, including a hammer and a wrench, back into the toolbox nearby. Then he put the stacked cans and other odds and ends back where they belonged.

Then he wet a tissue, held it in his left hand, and pressed it against the windowsill. He held that pose for a full ten seconds, finally took a deep breath, and slowly wiped across the sill.

The flour he had used to check whether anyone had opened the window and entered the room was wiped away completely by the damp tissue.

Now the room was completely clean and tidy.

Zhou Ming let out a breath and calmly looked around the room, checking the results of his work. Then he picked up the bag of trash he had just gathered. The black plastic bag was not very heavy, since it mostly held wastepaper and empty cans, but when he lifted it, he still felt that it had some weight to it.

Carrying the bag of things he needed to throw away, he walked to the door of the studio apartment and opened it.

As always, pitch black, churning fog surged at the doorway. It seemed to hide all the secrets of this world, yet it was so chaotic that reason could not see through it.

Standing before the rolling black fog, Zhou Ming hesitated for a moment. Then he lifted his hand and threw the bag of trash into the mist.

The moment the plastic bag left his hand, a strong urge rose in him to grab it back. It was as if those scraps of paper and empty cans were the last treasures in this world, and he was the last gambler, forced to guard every gram of matter in the room. But he forced that urge down. He opened his hand and calmly watched the plastic bag fall to the other side of the door and vanish at once into the seething fog.

He knew that those things would not really reach the other side of the door. Only he himself could arrive in that world as “Duncan”. All other matter would disappear into the surging fog as it passed through the doorway.

Now those things that should be thrown away had completely vanished into the “world outside the room”.

Zhou Ming wiped his hands, stepped forward, and got ready to leave this place. On the other side of the door, Alice was still waiting for him to come to dinner.

But at the very moment he was about to step through the doorway, a faint sound caught his attention. It was the sudden rise in speed of the computer fan.

Zhou Ming stopped at once, pulled his foot back, and looked toward the sound.

On the faintly glowing computer screen, the error page that had shown “Network connection interrupted” and “Remote server not responding” was flickering. Then the error text suddenly vanished. Right after that, the loading bar at the bottom of the page turned from red to green and slowly began to move forward.

Zhou Ming felt his heart pound as if it were about to explode. A suffocating feeling spread through his lungs. The next second, he slammed the door shut and rushed back to his desk.

The loading bar at the bottom of the browser window was still moving. Its dim green looked like a slow, steady line of fire spreading forward. And on the blank page above, something was really appearing as it loaded.

It was an image.

Zhou Ming stared fixedly at the picture as it slowly came into view.

The Moon.

It looked like a direct photograph taken from somewhere in space. The image showed the Moon floating in the dark void. Its gray white surface was covered with craters and ravines, shaped like strange, light and dark markings. Even though he was no astronomy expert, Zhou Ming was deeply familiar with this classic image.

And once again he confirmed that the drawing he had seen in Tyrian’s office truly showed the Moon. The details were exactly the same. It was clearly the kind of picture only someone who had seen the Moon with their own eyes, up close, could have copied so precisely.

Zhou Ming slowly sank back into his chair and leaned against the backrest. His expression froze as he stared at the image of the Moon that almost filled the screen. After a long time, his gaze finally shifted upward to the line he had entered in the search box earlier:

“Does the world beyond the fog still exist?”

He stayed silent. After a long time, he suddenly woke up from his stone like state, grabbed the keyboard, and quickly typed new words into the search box:

“Is this the answer?”

“Who gave this answer?”

After quickly typing these two questions, Zhou Ming stared at the computer screen.

But no “one” replied. No new image or loading bar appeared on the screen. Only the cursor turned in place, stiff and mechanical, like a silent, dull eye. As the fan slowly dropped back to its low, soft whir, all he could hear by his ears once more were his own breathing and heartbeat.

A moment later, the image of the Moon vanished as the page refreshed after a failed load. The screen went pale again, leaving only one line of text:

“Network connection interrupted or remote server not responding.”