novelsite Chapter 2 The World That Regresses
Chapter 2 The World That Regresses
"When discussing emergency response plans, one issue always comes up: these plans cannot be used in actual combat..."
Jiang Ning didn't remember when she fell asleep last night, only that she kept scrolling through her phone before going to bed, reading news articles, posts, and discussions among netizens in various live streams.
He roughly figured out what had happened in the past five days.
The first instance of "world reversal" occurred at 5:15 AM Beijing time on March 21.
During this time period, most people in the Eastern Hemisphere are asleep: in Europe it is between 22 pm and 23 pm the previous night, in the Middle East it is between 1 am and 4 am, in Africa it is between 22 pm the previous night and 1 am the next day, in Oceania it is morning, and in North America it is afternoon the previous day.
The first regions to react were Oceania and North America. People were as if they had been collectively frozen in place, suddenly experiencing a wave of dizziness. When they regained consciousness, they found that their environment had changed.
At first, some people thought they were kidnapped, some thought they were hallucinating, and some thought they were being pranked. But as everyone around them said things had changed, people realized that something was wrong.
Panic and chaos erupted instantly in the streets and alleys. Traffic came to a standstill, factories shut down, schools closed, and countless people crowded the streets in a state of utter chaos.
Many people online described the first day of the disaster as the day the global internet suddenly "lost its memory".
People post on social media, but the posts disappear immediately after being published; some people find that the messages they sent were not received by the recipients because the recipients also experienced a time rewind and could not see the new messages.
Major internet companies attempted to restore service, but after 23 hours all efforts were in vain, and the world was once again set back a day.
Day 1 of the disaster: Global transportation is paralyzed.
Everything moving forward—cars, trains, airplanes, and ships—has regressed to the state it was in 24 hours ago. Car accidents and traffic jams are everywhere, as if it were the end of the world.
The Ministry of Transport attempted to coordinate and direct the efforts, with all traffic police mobilized and ambulances making every effort to move forward, but the results were not satisfactory. Some people ultimately met their end in the operating room, while others slowly died in the car accident and were later revived.
Day 1 of the disaster: Three hours after the strange phenomenon appeared, China took the lead in activating a Level I emergency response.
The army began entering the city to maintain order; six hours later, the UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting; nine hours later, countries around the world urgently summoned scientists to try to find the cause.
Ultimately, the orders could not be executed continuously. Soldiers would return to their barracks, weapons would be put back into storage, and the data compiled by scientists would be reduced to zero as time went on.
"Repeat, repeat, it has to fucking repeat!"
This is the most frequently said sentence online. Everyone has different emotions when they say it. Some people hope that the world will continue to regress, some people watch it as a spectacle, and most people are just using it as a meme.
Jiang Ning followed the information flow to trace the source and found that the sentence originally came from an old man named Chen Xiao. The original video was no longer available. Zhang Ning learned from online discussions that the old man named Chen Xiao was a leader of the China Emergency Management Department.
Netizens recalled that Chen Xiao made this statement at a press conference following the regression of World War III:
"When it comes to emergency plans, one issue always comes up: emergency plans cannot be used in actual combat."
"But our emergency response team is willing to repeat itself. This is not just about repeating the same things or issuing the same orders, but also about telling everyone that even in the face of such bizarre events, even if our efforts today yield no results, none of our emergency response team members will be deterred. We are still willing to continue our efforts until we find a new way to survive..."
"So, repeat, repeat, it has to be fucking repeated."
Perhaps it is these resounding yet down-to-earth words that have kept the emotions of all Chinese people relatively stable after the world has experienced five major setbacks.
"I want to go out and see!"
After recalling all the information he had seen last night, Jiang Ning immediately got out of bed.
Others might see it as a disaster, but he doesn't.
This is an opportunity for redemption, and I must see it for myself before I can feel at ease.
While washing her face in the bathroom, Jiang Ning wiped the dressing mirror, which was only slightly bright in the center, and saw a middle-aged man in the mirror with disheveled hair, a long beard, and a pale face.
Jiang Ning chuckled to himself.
I used to think that life had no meaning, and taking care of myself was even more meaningless.
Life seems to be full of hope again, but if Lin Wei knew how I looked in the future, she would definitely be angry with me.
Jiang Ning took off the clothes he had been wearing for who knows how many days, stood under the shower, and let the cold water pour over him. The cold water bath in March made him tremble uncontrollably.
Jiang Ning insisted on washing for ten minutes before quickly running back to her bedroom to find a relatively clean set of clothes to put on again.
After getting dressed, Jiang Ning returned to the bathroom, picked up a pair of scissors in her right hand, and began to groom herself in front of the mirror.
Soon, a clean face and a buzz cut appeared in the mirror.
His buzz cut was uneven, with some cuts deeper and some shallower, and there was a slit on the left side of his cheek. Combined with his pale face, it made him look very strange, like a prisoner who had just been released from jail.
Jiang Ning looked at himself for a while, then thought that he was too conspicuous, so he took out a black windbreaker with a faint musty smell from the closet and put it on.
However, when Jiang Ning reached the front door, he hesitated, and his hand stopped abruptly from opening the door.
He couldn't help but start trembling all over, as if there were a raging flood or a ferocious beast outside the door.
"call……"
After a long while, he took a deep breath and forcefully pulled open the door.
"Woof woof woof..."
Suddenly, a loud barking came from inside the neighbor's house. Jiang Ning ignored it and quietly stood alone in the hallway waiting for the elevator.
"Woof woof woof..."
The dog kept barking, its barking becoming increasingly fierce.
A moment later, Jiang Ning heard the dog owner's scolding voice coming from the next room: "You damn dog, what are you barking for?!"
Just then, the elevator doors opened, and Jiang Ning slipped inside without hesitation.
After stepping out of the elevator, Jiang Ning didn't see many people along the way until she reached the main gate of the residential area. The entire community seemed eerily quiet.
There were a few night owls running around, but they scattered in panic as soon as they saw Jiang Ning.
Jiang Ning walked to the gate of the residential area and found that the security guard who was usually on duty was nowhere to be seen.
Jiang Ning looked back at the neighborhood, glanced around, and vaguely sensed that many people were standing on their balconies or behind their windows, peeking at him.
Looking from the nearest balcony, the man who was stealing glances at him seemed to have both surprise and a restless look in his eyes.
"Buzz..."
A deafening roar, with a long, drawn-out echo, resounded from the horizon.
Jiang Ning looked up and saw a fighter jet of an indiscernible type speeding overhead, emitting a muffled alarm.