novelsite Chapter 9 The Two-Day Pact
Chapter 9 The Two-Day Pact
March 12th, Arbor Day
As dawn broke, several J-7000 airborne early warning aircraft whirred and swooped back and forth over Shanghai.
In room 2102 of building 7 in the Fanhuali residential complex, the view was dim, and Jiang Ning suddenly woke up from his bed with a start.
After waking up, he looked dazed for a while, as if he had slept for too long and was still confused, or as if he was reliving the dream he had just had.
Jiang Ning had previously studied dreams, as it was part of his job.
Before resigning, he worked for three years at the "Spring Sleep" Sleep Research Institute in Shanghai. The institute's core work mainly includes three categories: clinical diagnosis and treatment, basic and translational research, and health management and promotion.
Jiang Ning is in charge of "basic and translational research," and usually explores scientific questions such as sleep and wakefulness mechanisms.
Occasionally, I also participate in the research and development of new sleep monitoring technologies and auxiliary devices as a tester.
However, more time is spent conducting online and offline surveys on the sleep status of Chinese residents.
This work isn't exactly high-end science, and it rarely gets to appear in the public eye. Most people's understanding of it probably comes from the various "sleep research reports" published each year.
In his understanding, dreams are merely a metabolism of daytime activities at the experiential level, much like defragmenting a computer's hard drive, which helps improve its performance.
But Jiang Ning remembered this dream very clearly. In the dream, he seemed to have fallen into a mysterious space, with patches of clouds swirling around him, as if he were in a celestial palace, surrounded by strange lights and rising purple mist.
With a gentle wave of his hand, the purple mist transformed into tiny purple beads, each the size of a grain of rice, distinct and resembling ant eggs upon closer inspection, as if containing life within them.
In his dream, Jiang Ning remembered touching a purple bead in his palm. It was cool and soft to the touch. The bead was covered by a thin gray cloak. As he stared at it, he was shocked and horrified to discover that he could see through the cloak and clearly sense that there was a person sleeping soundly inside...
"call……"
This discovery jolted Jiang Ning awake from his dream, and he then heard a buzzing sound coming from the sky outside the window.
Jiang Ning shook his head, knowing that this was an early warning system issued by the KJ-9000.
The emergence of the KJ-9000 early warning aircraft signifies that a new "world regression" has just occurred, and these are the experiences summarized by netizens over the past few days.
In response, the official team made several explanations during the live stream to reassure everyone that there was no need to panic.
Jiang Ning groped in the dark, lifted the covers, got out of bed, and slowly walked out of the bedroom into the living room.
He was used to the dim lighting in the room. Over the past year, he had hardly ever turned on the lights. Besides, he was very familiar with the layout of the room.
This is a fully furnished four-bedroom, one-living-room apartment. He hasn't been to the master bedroom in a long time, and he hasn't been to the other secondary bedroom, which has been converted into a study, either. There is also a cutely decorated children's bedroom, but the door is locked.
Over the past year, Jiang Ning's activities have mainly taken place in the guest rooms and the living room...
The living room layout was also very simple. Besides two sofas, a coffee table, and a TV, Jiang Ning had moved everything else that could be moved to the balcony and piled it up.
Once the balcony is filled in, the light inside the house will become dimmer, which is exactly the effect Jiang Ning wanted.
"bite……"
The LCD TV on the wall turned on automatically again, and light instantly filled the living room, illuminating the mess on the coffee table. On the coffee table were unwashed bowls and chopsticks, leftover beverage bottles, books soaked in oil and grime, empty wine bottles, and all kinds of plastic bags stuffed with garbage, a dazzling array of things.
Urgent Notice:
At 4:35 AM today, the ninth instance of a collective "time reversal" occurred in multiple locations worldwide. Preliminary verification indicates that all residents within my country experienced the same thing—the physical world reverted to 24 hours prior, while their memories remained continuous. The cause of this phenomenon is currently unclear, and the international community is urgently communicating…
The wording was the same; if it weren't for the fact that it was the ninth time and the announcer had changed to a woman, Jiang Ning would have thought it was a TV rebroadcast.
The world has already experienced its ninth regression. Jiang Ning was oblivious to the previous five, and didn't notice them.
It's not his fault. For him, staying home all day makes no difference between yesterday and tomorrow.
If this smart TV hadn't been forcibly activated after the fifth "world regression," Jiang Ning probably still wouldn't know what was happening outside!
There was a lot of discussion online about how some smart appliances were forcibly turned on and others were forcibly turned off.
However, ultimately, considering that this behavior—infringing on user privacy and using the universal AI capabilities of "Smart Brain" to interfere in people's lives—was intended to ensure the safety of the majority and to prevent people in remote areas from being unaware of the outside world, the overall benefits outweighed the drawbacks, and the discussions gradually subsided.
This explanation came from Jiang Ning's online post yesterday, where he asked why his "Xiao Ai" (a smart chatbot) wasn't working. It was only then that a netizen explained these things to him.
The explanation also included that the government has currently suspended the voice interaction capabilities of home "AI" in order to reduce computing power consumption.
Jiang Ning watched TV for a while, then started looking for his phone.
In comparison, the "world's regression" has not had a significant impact on his life. Over the past year, he has become accustomed to living a secluded life, not contacting the outside world, not working, and having no social needs. The changes in the outside world have really had little impact on him.
However, ever since I found out about this, finding my phone every day has become a hassle.
Jiang Ning had absolutely no recollection of what she had done "yesterday," let alone where she had thrown her phone the day before.
Therefore, for the past four days, he has had to look for his phone almost every time he wakes up.
He turned on the living room chandelier, stood in the empty and somewhat messy room, looked around for a while, then turned the chandelier off again. After a while, he finally saw the notification light on his phone among a pile of tissues on the dining table.
I turned on my phone, and it showed that the battery was at 60%.
Date displayed: March 12, 2047.
After getting the phone back, there's one more troublesome thing: I have to re-download the software.
After downloading the software, Jiang Ning first entered the Douyin app, which had been running for decades.
As soon as the app, which combines short videos and live streams, was opened, an elderly man with half-white hair and a resolute face appeared on the screen.
The old man's name was Chen Xiao. His eyes were as sharp as ever, and his hair was half white. He looked like an old man, but through watching his live streams occasionally over the past few days, Jiang Ning could clearly feel that the man was radiating an energy that even young people couldn't match.
This is a kind of drive, a kind of perseverance, and a fighting spirit that refuses to admit defeat.
The other person was facing the camera, speaking forcefully and confidently: "Breaking news..."
Upon hearing the latest news, Jiang Ning immediately turned up the volume on his phone and stared intently at the screen.
Breaking news: Core scientists from institutions such as CERN, NASA, ESA, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have officially established the International Time Research Consortium (ITRC) today.
Headquartered in Geneva, this alliance aims to unite global scientific research efforts to unravel the mystery of "world regression." We will subsequently launch a temporary website for global sharing, named "Alarm Clock," hoping that all amateur scientists worldwide will contribute their expertise and work collaboratively on this platform. Furthermore, I reiterate my appeal: this website is currently intended solely for scientific research; please, the general public, refrain from posting irrelevant information on it unless absolutely necessary…
Furthermore, starting today, as recommended by the International Time Research Alliance, the world will adopt two sets of time coordinates to locate our world.
The first set is the Physical Day, abbreviated as PD, which refers to the actual number of times the Earth rotates, starting from March 21, 2046.
The second set is Consciousness Days, or CDs for short. It refers to the number of days an individual has accumulated in their memory, which varies from person to person and mainly depends on the average number of days accumulated, starting from March 20, 2046.
"In addition, double labeling: PD and CD, for example, today is the 10th day of physical day, and the average day of consciousness is the 9th day."
Chen Xiao's speech was extensive and enigmatic. It seemed that time was tight, and the public was not given much time to digest the information. Most of the content at the beginning was easy for everyone to understand, but the so-called "Physics Day" and "Consciousness Day," especially the "Consciousness Average Day," left them confused.
However, Chen Xiao did not offer much explanation. After finishing his speech, he left the stage without mentioning the specific national emergency response plan for the day. Instead, he handed the press conference over to a middle-aged man named Li Mubai.
After Chen Xiao left the stage, Jiang Ning quickly understood the difference between the so-called Physical Day and Consciousness Day through the bullet comments.
The former refers to the normal forward progress of the world, while the latter refers to the backward memories accumulated by individuals after the entire world has fallen into regression.
"As for the average day of consciousness?"
Jiang Ning pursed his lips and clenched his fists tightly. He had found the answer in the comments section.
At this moment, the bullet comments changed to inscriptions:
「孙梦梦，卒于物理日2047年3月29日，卒于意识日2047年3月13日，现在重返娘胎……」
「王小雪，卒于物理日2047年3月24日，卒于意识日2047年3月18日，享年物理日3天，意识平均日2天……」
……
Many years later, when Jiang Ning recalled this incident, all that remained in her memory was a passage that Minister Chen Xiao had said to her on a relatively warm winter day:
"That day, we signed a document at the conference center. Nobody knew if it would be reset and erased the next day, but everyone was very serious when they signed it."
This is because it is the first time that humanity has actively defined time while the world is in a state of regression.
Physics Day is the world's clock.
Consciousness Day is a clock in the heart.
Both bells are equally important!
As Chen Xiao said, history has indeed shown that the dual-track time system was the first to acknowledge the "dual nature of time" from both a scientific and social perspective, which is of great historical significance. It provided a time measurement basis for subsequent systems such as time banks, memory courts, and sobriety shifts, marking a shift in humanity from "passively enduring chaos" to "actively establishing a new order."
In later generations, people have given this day many names, the two most famous of which are:
The Progressive faction officially refers to it as the "Founding Documents of the Time Order".
The Cycle School popularly refers to it as "the starting point of the first split".
Jiangning, on the other hand, prefers to call it the "Double-Day Appointment"...