novelsite Chapter 94 New Year's Day
Chapter 94 New Year's Day
Sun Fumin hadn't slept for 35 hours. In the first 24 hours, he felt in good spirits. In the next five or six hours, he was able to get along well with Su Mian. This period of time was also very good.
However, after nearly 30 hours, Su Mian got tired of talking, and Sun Fumin also said he was tired. Chang Nian was replaced by a flight attendant to accompany them, and the time became difficult to pass.
Fortunately, Lu Xue and Zhang Jimin also woke up at this time, and everyone stayed with them. With more people around, Sun Fumin became much more energetic.
In the lobby of Taiqing No. 1 Courtyard, Lu Xue suddenly stood up from the sofa, holding up a tablet and saying, "Everyone, look at the news! Today's travel time has broken a new record!"
Upon hearing this, Sun Fumin mustered his strength, took out his phone, and opened the hottest social media platform. Sure enough, he saw countless people discussing it.
"The world has moved forward for over 35 hours, and there's still no sign of it regressing. Could it be that the catastrophe is over?"
"That's not necessarily true; it might have mutated!"
"What's going on? Why is it taking so long to move forward today?"
Questions and exclamations kept appearing in various forums and live streams, all expressing confusion and surprise.
Looking at the news reports, Zhang Jimin glanced up at Sun Fumin and couldn't help but ask, "Fumin, can you still handle this?"
Upon hearing this, Sun Fumin was initially puzzled, but then, seeing Zhang Jimin looking at him with a serious expression, a thought inexplicably flashed through his mind, which immediately put him at ease.
He exclaimed, "No way! I wasn't sleeping, so the world wouldn't regress?"
……
There's a saying that goes, "You may plant flowers with care, but they may not bloom; you may plant willows unintentionally, and they may grow in abundance."
The six members of the Huitian Group paid little attention to the outside world's turmoil.
However, the experiment, which was attempted once, presented a result to everyone in a way that no one expected.
When the result came out, everyone thought it was absurd and ridiculous, but they had no choice but to accept it.
The reasons for the world's regression are still unclear to most people.
But they unexpectedly discovered that as long as someone doesn't sleep, the world will keep moving forward.
After the fifth repetition, everyone in the Huitian Group, except for Jiang Ning who did not participate in the all-night test, had verified it once, and the group finally gave up.
"Staying up late can make time move forward..."
After receiving this news, Chen Xiao personally flew to Taiqing Mountain to meet with the Huitian Group.
……
January 12, 2046, New Year's Day.
The world's 75 billion people are still reeling from yesterday's unusually long day.
Countries issued announcements simultaneously, and the announcements were very brief:
"Through joint observations and cross-verification by multiple countries, it has now been confirmed that the space region at an altitude of 1000 kilometers and above is not affected by the daily time rollback phenomenon on the Earth's surface. Satellite orbit data, space station telemetry, and deep space probe signals all show that the material and time processes in this region remain continuous, and no daily reset has occurred."
This means that spacecraft, scientific equipment, and the digital information stored in them, operating in orbits above 1000 kilometers, will become humanity's only "lasting" material heritage.
The global joint working group has activated an emergency plan to upload the daily accumulated memories and critical data from the Earth's surface to secure space nodes via high-orbit relay links.
Specific technical pathways and resource allocation plans will be announced in subsequent reports. We urge all countries and the public to cooperate and cherish this window of opportunity to break free from the cycle.
The announcement came as a bolt from the blue, or like an ice cream being thrown into a boiling pot of oil.
There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at the words "1000 kilometers," repeatedly confirming that they hadn't misread it.
Then, the world exploded.
The phone lines of the spacefaring superpower were overwhelmed with calls, and the few remaining high-orbit tracking stations were flooded with requests: not from heads of state, but from ordinary citizens.
Someone cried and asked, "Could you upload my photos? Could you record my child crying? That's the only thing I have that won't disappear."
The stock market, which no one had paid attention to before, miraculously surged for fifteen minutes.
All stocks related to satellite storage and space computing surged, then the trading system crashed because the server was still resetting daily, making it impossible to continuously clear order data.
Some people smiled wryly: "We can't even harvest a whole round of chives."
Scientists from the small country went mad; they stormed into long-abandoned laboratories and unearthed dusty rocket blueprints.
Someone did the math on the spot: even if all the world's remaining resources were used, it would take at least nine days to send one kilogram of payload into a 1000-kilometer orbit. And every day, the surface materials would be reset, which means that all construction progress would be reset to zero within nine days, and a new rocket could not be built at all.
Thus, ecstasy turned into a new despair, and all of humanity paid no attention to why the travel time in recent days had been so inconsistent; all that remained was madness.
First, it sparked a craze for "physical ascension".
Suicide launches have occurred in many parts of the world. Leaving aside rockets from various countries, people are trying to send themselves into the air using garbage bags, plastic sheets, and hot air balloons.
They didn't expect to reach 1000 kilometers alive because there is no oxygen outside the atmosphere.
However, some people firmly believe that "as long as the body leaves the Earth's surface rollback area, it can return to the normal timeline and be resurrected."
In just one week, hundreds of people died from hypothermia, lack of oxygen, or falls.
Even worse, some people tie their children to weather balloons and cry, "Go up there for me, live for me."
Next, the most popular thing was the emergence of a sect that called itself "Memory Upload".
A group of geeks developed the theory of "digitalization of consciousness," claiming that it is possible to transmit human memories to a satellite 1000 kilometers away via electromagnetic waves.
They built a huge array of directional antennas, had volunteers sit at the focal point, and then irradiated their brains with high-powered electromagnetic pulses.
The results were: brain damage, epilepsy, and death. No memories were uploaded, but the sect leader claimed that "their souls have arrived at the normal timeline," which attracted even more desperate people to join.
Most heartbreakingly, people who had actively followed the "Yesterday Survival" plan began to withdraw en masse.
They said, "Since there's a normal tomorrow ahead, why pretend to live in this cycle?"
The farewell ceremony was canceled, the memory bank stopped updating, and the supporters left the station one after another.
People have fallen back into a quagmire of alcoholism, fighting, and suicide, and social order has regressed by three months in just three days.
The most extreme act came from the parliament of a small country: they voted to collectively relocate to a high-altitude region and then simultaneously detonate all their nuclear weapons, attempting to eject crustal material more than 1000 kilometers away through the nuclear shockwave.
They calculated that "even if only one gram of soil enters the normal timeline, the memory information attached to it has the potential to be read by a future higher-dimensional civilization."
The plan was blocked by other countries, but the resulting panic led hundreds of thousands of people to flock to the plateau, causing stampedes and avalanches.
Compared to these, ordinary people mostly "shout out to the sky".
Every evening at dusk, countless people shout out their life stories to the sky, hoping their voices will reach satellites 1000 kilometers away.
They believed that "if enough people shout at the same time, the sound waves can penetrate the atmosphere."
Scientists have repeatedly explained that sound waves cannot travel in a vacuum, but no one listens.
Every day at the same time, deafening collective shouts resounded in valleys, plains, and rooftops around the world.
It wasn't a protest, nor a cry for help, but rather an outpouring that bordered on a religious ritual, as if the nightmare would end if the world above could hear it.
At the same time, war finally broke out...