Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 55 - Reappearing Yesterdays (4)

Chapter 55 – Reappearing Yesterdays (4)

Time could flow very quickly, but it could also flow very slowly.

When it flowed quickly, it was as if ten years passed in an instant. When it was slow, it flowed like a pipe with a tiny, insignificant crack, first seeping out water, then finally condensing into a droplet, falling down with a “plop”. And after that, one second would have passed.

Ling Yi’s time was, without a doubt, the kind that passed the slowest.

The subspace was pitch black, without any objects of reference. At a glance, everything was identical and unchanging, as if it was complete, utter stillness. All the lights on the spaceship were turned off, only when he walked over to a particular area would it sense him and light up again.

—The single atom inside the filament would change from a higher energy state to a low energy state, releasing a photon, and then there would be light.

Ling Yi gazed at the light source, deeply contemplating why he had memorised such things, yet the voyage was still not complete.

The night he gained expertise in calculus, he was also plagued with the same uncertainties.

The next time he had such doubts, he would probably have to wait until he finished reading Dostoevsky.

But perhaps these things could not be achieved too easily, as the hours where he was conscious lessened further and further.

Several times he looked at his own reflection in the mirror, and discovered that under the rays of the white light, a small smidge of ominous purple colour oozed out from his pupils. Sometimes, the blood extracted with his syringe was also a greyed out, dark purple.

The virus and his body engaged in a weary tug-of-war over many months and years, and this war could not be said to be gentle. Every instant, every moment, he was living in the pain of his muscles and organs corroding in his body and then forcibly growing back on itself.

He did not know whether his digestive system was still intact. He had long been unable to drink the nutrient fluids, so after several times of vomiting out the fluids mixed with blood, he switched to injecting vitality liquid into his body.

Even though the situation seemed very difficult, he still earnestly tried to continue his routine life. 28

Sleep early, wake up early. His body was weak and constantly vomiting blood, so he could not train, and ended up searching for things to look at in the database. For example, those things he was so unwilling to watch that he’d rather watch Peppa Pig and Barbie, he gradually became able to watch them. Those maths questions Lin Si forced him to do by pressing on his head, surprisingly, became a useful tool to pass the time—if he was not truly in so much pain that he could not think, he felt like he could have become a mathematician.

At night, when he could not sleep, he would ingest some sleeping pills, spray that perfume bottle he quietly took from Lin Si’s room, and he would forget that his own body was rotting away. In the top note of the familiar costus root scent, he would have occasional good or bad dreams.

Unexpectedly, in those dreams, he glimpsed many fragments of his life back on Earth.

Ling Jing did not speak much. She always came and left hastily, and seldom returned home. Occasionally, she would be on vacation, and when she was not on a date with Zheng Shu, she taught him mixed martial arts at home.

He was running along a silver corridor, stopped in front of a door and quietly peeked inside. Ling Ning was typing a program, his taps against the keyboard like playing piano.

Piano…he knew how to play it, it seemed that he also dreamed about it before. On a certain afternoon with dazzling sunlight, a white swing hung above the lawn outside the floor-to-ceiling window. Ye Selin was teaching himself how to play a song; it seemed to be “A Comme Amour” or “Für Elise”, he could not remember clearly.

Ye Selin’s eyes were very quiet, like the ocean where life was birthed from. As for her facial features, he had no impression of them anymore.

—He only remembered these fragments. There was no internal logic that linked them together.

There were more times when he dreamed about Lin Si. Lin Si was still the same as the one in his memories, wearing a white dress shirt buttoned up to the collar, his lips thin and pale, occasionally revealing a faint hint of a smile that made his entire soul quiver. This emotion was very hard to describe, until there was a day he saw a word, written as “flip”, which seemed to match.

Frequently the pain would magnify, reaching a point where he could not tolerate anymore and could not do anything at all, as if every single cell in his body was being torn apart, and then he would lose consciousness. When he woke up again, he did not know how much time had passed, and felt as if he had lost all control over his body, where even the smallest shift of movement would result in an even stronger, heart-piercing pain.

At the same time, Lucia’s situation was not optimistic, or in other words, it was very troublesome.

After that mistake at the start, her command window would often pop up hundreds or even thousand rows of illogical codes, then it would stop running. Ling Yi would reboot her immediately when he discovered them. Sometimes it would be a few days, or even a few minutes, the operation would continue reporting errors. Thankfully, the voyage program was set very early on, otherwise the entire spaceship could be lost in the subspace, forever unable to return.

Ling Yi did not know what she was calculating and did not know what went wrong and where. He attempted to make Lucia stop all calculations to prevent errors, but he was not recorded as an administrator in the entire system, thus did not have the authority to control its command model, so Lucia could only infinitely cycle between reboot and error.

Her three-dimensional hologram sometimes appeared, sometimes it did not. Occasionally, when Ling Yi woke up after falling unconscious, the first thing he saw after opening his eyes was her keeping watch beside him. Occasionally, she would not even appear once in dozens of days.

“Lucia?” His voice was hoarse. “Where are you feeling unwell?”

Lucia’s azure eyes gazed at him quietly, no words spoken. Without any reason, Ling Yi could see powerlessness within her expressionless face.

The good thing was that, although it was difficult to endure the long duration of time, in the end it still passed by every second, every minute. And although the virus was vicious, in the end he still withstood it day by day.

Over fifty people died in their freezing cabins. He could not make out the shape of a human from their corpses that remained.

In the last days, Ling Yi was only awake for several fragmented hours at a time every day. If the subspace journey was not approaching the end, he believed he would have gone insane already.

“Activating warp drive twelve times.”

“Leaving subspace.”

The sea of stars was still as vast as before. Millions and thousands of stars glittered, as if they were eternally unchanging.

Ling Yi felt like he was alive once more.

“Welcome back to the real space. The Expeditioner will land shortly. Target planet: TKM-IV. Target planet average wind speed: 6.3 metres per second…”

“Confirmed ‘Voyager’ coordinates. Sending connection request.”

Ling Yi was suddenly struck with a realisation.

“Lucia!” He raised his voice sharply. “stop the connection!”

Lucia’s voice remained robotic and calm. “Sending connection request.”

“Request received. Currently preparing connection, please wait.”

Ling Yi flew to the master control panel, swiftly rapping on the holographic screen.

At the same time, on the Voyager.

The news of the Expeditioner’s return was sent to every person’s bracelet at the same time; everyone’s faces wore expressions of joy. A command was sent out from the master control room, and the giant ship slowly unfolded its wings, opening its docking gangway.

In the following instant, the master control tower received another message, very short, very eerie.

“Don’t connect.”

The person in charge of the master controls frowned, but in the next instant he received a call request from the Expeditioner.

He connected the call.

On the screen floated a face that would ingrain in someone’s mind forever the moment they saw it.

If you did not see it with your own eyes, you would hardly be able to imagine someone who looked like this would exist in the real world. The thick and heavy colours were unbridled on his features, aggressive like a siege,29 but since there was no anger on that face, it added a sense of danger and mysteriousness, like the lover of an evil warlock from a dark fairy tale who was hidden away in the depths of a castle.

“Please stop the connection right now.” The person on the screen spoke a sentence, heaved for a bit, then continued. “The Expeditioner is carrying a strong virus, its danger level exceeding the Berlin virus. The navigation system is also out of control. Please keep your distance.”

The person in charge immediately realised the gravity of the situation, reporting it to Marshal and Madam Chen at the same time. After that, he shut down the connection system and activated the engine so the Voyager slowly left the Expeditioner that was moving towards it.

The call was not cut during this period of time. As such, the person in charge could clearly hear the robotic voice that rang out from the Expeditioner’s master control room.

“Change in ‘Voyager’ coordinates. Currently reorienting.”

“Orientation successful. Sending connection request. Please wait.”

The Voyager moved again.

“Change in ‘Voyager’ coordinates. Currently reorienting.”

“Orientation successful. Sending connection request. Please wait…”

Ling Yi’s face was pale. Enduring through the intense pain in his body, he tried to reboot Lucia again.

It was no use. The voyage program had been set early on.

He spat out a breath with difficulty and said to the other side of the call, “Help me connect to Tang Ning from Area 5, explain the situation to him.”

The Voyagers were highly efficient in their work. After three minutes, Tang Ning’s face appeared on the screen.

“Lucia cannot commit this kind of lousy mistake, there must be a problem.” Tang Ning did not pay attention to Ling Yi’s condition, speaking quickly. “Open the Arisic window and do as I say.”

At the same time, Lucia said, “Connection failed. Executing the second solution. Preparing to land on TKM-IV, please wait.”

Ling Yi’s hand was shaking, not only because his body was already extremely weak, but also because he was nervous.

They absolutely could not allow the Expeditioner to bring the virus to this planet!

If he had also undergone freezing—then the Expeditioner would not hesitate to connect with the Voyager, and then, hell would be replayed once more.

“Enter this command—the password is ‘Hello World’—and run the emergency program…then forcibly cut the energy of the third circuit,” said Tang Ning. “Do you remember the place where you installed the black box? Take it out.”

Ling Yi followed Tang Ning’s instructions, at last removing Lucia’s core hardware. The Exepditioner finally ceased all its movements, gradually slowing to a stop outside the exosphere.

They were safe.

Tang Ning let out a breath he was holding. “What’s next? Are all of you doing okay on your end?”

“Very bad…” Ling Yi gasped lightly, his voice mildly hoarse. “Get Lin Si to pick me up.”

“Madam Chen already received the news. You look terrible—hang in there…” Tang Ning said, then suddenly widened his eyes. “Ling Yi!”

The sky spun and the earth darkened in front of Ling Yi as he planted straight down. In between his fading consciousness, he seemed to hear Lin Si’s voice.

“Good boy. Come to me.”

—The storage room was like a graveyard, with taxidermy surrounding him on all sides, and sleeping cabins all over the floor. Lin Si stood beneath the cold light tubes, reaching out a hand towards him from far, far away.

This was the first time he saw Lin Si.

But it still was not…not the first time, even before, he must have heard this name before.

He traced back to the distant recollections of time, to a peaceful and quiet afternoon where he was playing on the swing. Ye Selin was with him, but she was on a call, her tone gentle and light-hearted. He could vaguely make out a few sentences.

“You’re staying in Berlin for quite long this time…you should come back to see…I have a pretty interesting project going on here…Lingling’s wanted to meet you for a long time, but he never got the chance…since you’re back, he definitely can’t wait to go to your place.”

Ling Yi was stunned. Tears suddenly streamed down his face.

This time, I have no way to go to where you are. 30

It hurts so much. I can’t move… you need to come pick me up.

He closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking into the boundless darkness.

*

The author has something to say:

1) Flip, its meaning is a light flick or a light strike. There’s also a more romantic definition: the sudden beating of the heart~ 31

It’s over, this part is over. Carefully carries the kitten back home~

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