Dow and Carbon-Based Monkey Breeding Guidelines

Chapter 1004: The Long Night (Part )

"Is there a power outage?" someone sitting in the corner asked first.

Everyone looked up at the row of lights above their heads. Then there were all kinds of screams and people picked up their phones and computers to check. "What's going on?" someone asked. "Is there a war?" someone speculated in panic. "Could it be radiation from some machine nearby?" The second person was also worried. Most people ignored their shocking arguments, only a few voices laughed dryly and soon stopped because they were boring.

The legs of the chairs moved back and forth in front of the table, and the chaotic footsteps finally gathered towards the window. "The street lights are not on." "Is it not time to light up yet?" So many people wanted to check the time, but the wall clock at the door of the study room stopped a few days ago. At the moment, they were helpless and could only stare at the sunset outside the window. After a while, a middle-aged woman in an administrator's uniform came and said that the study room would not be open tonight. While it was still bright inside, everyone had to leave the library as soon as possible.

"Can I borrow this book to read?" someone asked.

"No, the system can't be opened now. Just leave it here."

"Ah? You don't need to put it in the book return area?"

The uniformed woman did not treat him well, and once again raised her voice to announce that everyone must leave immediately through the security checkpoint. She stood by the door, waiting for the people in the study room to pack up their belongings with indifference, and the slightest complaint or delay would be met with her cold eyes. Everyone would unconsciously turn their heads away when leaving the room to avoid her rude and impolite gaze.

Xiao Chen had already put down his pen. When the crowd was discussing the situation, he just sat helplessly on the chair, frequently looking at the tutor beside him who was reading. Although it was a significant improvement compared to a year ago, for someone with his disease, speaking in public is always a mentally exhausting thing.

"Brother Xiaohao." He called in a low voice.

The tutor, who was buried in a book, finally raised his head, looked at the sky outside the window, and put the foreign book that Xiao Chen didn't recognize on the corner of the table. "Let's go too." He said to Xiao Chen, "We can't stay here, and we can do the rest of the homework when we get home."

He helped Xiao Chen pack his schoolbag, then took the student's hand and followed the last wave of people. Because he suffers from congenital autism, Xi Chen always likes to stay in places that are out of sight of others, such as the back of the crowd. However, when they passed by the middle-aged woman at the door, her sharp and critical gaze made him unable to hide, and he could only hold the corner of Zeng Hao's clothes tightly.

Zeng Hao gently held his shoulders with his hands, and stared at the middle-aged woman for a moment. The woman had an ordinary face, no distinctive features, and was wearing a standard administrator uniform, but Zeng Hao knew very well that she was a complete stranger. He had never seen this face in the library in the past two years.

The woman was also examining his appearance. She was very particular about the details of his appearance. She didn't just look at his face in general, but focused on his facial features, as if she was measuring the length of his eyebrows and whether the distance between his nose and lips was reasonable. Zeng Hao didn't feel anything special about such a critical and offensive look. She just looked away and walked by with her head down, like everyone else.

People walked down the stairs to the lobby. Because of the power outage in the building, several uniformed male security guards were sitting together in front of the exit, which made people feel a little uneasy. However, their attitude was very casual, and they didn't care about the power outage at all, so the atmosphere was not that tense.

An old man with slightly bald hair and a red nose leaned against the service counter, chatting and laughing with the security guards about health food; he was not wearing any uniform, but only a particularly large nylon jacket, with both hands tucked under the jacket, probably because the temperature in the museum was too low. Zeng Hao had never seen this old man, who was about fifty years old, before, but his expression was as eager as a regular customer, and he would nod happily to anyone who stared at him; those who were inexplicably treated with courtesy could only smile in confusion, wondering in their hearts whether they had seen them before.

Zeng Hao only glanced slightly sideways in the crowd and glanced at the old man a few times. The other party actually noticed it and nodded to him warmly. The arc of the corners of his mouth made the nasolabial folds deeply sunken on both sides of the nose, but the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were very calm and almost unchanged. This pair of cold and focused eyes confirmed the situation for Zeng Hao; he naturally turned his eyes away and continued to walk towards the twilight outside the door. When he passed by the old man, the other party suddenly called out softly.

"Hey!" the old man said in a gentle voice, "boy, the chain of your schoolbag is untied."

Zeng Hao stopped and leaned over to check Xiao Chen's schoolbag. The zipper of the main bag was tightly closed, and before he could check the secondary bag, the old man suddenly jumped over from the service desk, stretched out a hand from his coat, and gently pulled Xiao Chen's backpack.

"Here, here." He pulled the side that Zeng Hao couldn't see and said, "Hey, the zipper thread is loose."

Zeng Hao didn't look up, still holding his hand on Xiao Chen's shoulder, calming his nervousness caused by the approach of a stranger. Strangely, he could feel the old man's eyes on him - was there something wrong? Or was it just a coincidence? He looked at the old man's hand hidden in his coat again. It should be a weapon, he thought.

In the few seconds of delay, the nearest crowd had already walked out of the venue gate, and was about to leave him and Xiao Chen behind. A security guard standing by the door suddenly coughed; his eyes were fixed on a delicatessen on the street. Behind the store door stood a tightly wrapped person, quietly peeking at the library door.

The old man heard the cough. His eyes also caught the man who was peeping at the library door outside, and his hand holding Xiao Chen's schoolbag loosened. Taking advantage of the fact that no one was paying attention, Zeng Hao gently pushed Xiao Chen, encouraging him to leave if he wanted to, without worrying about other people's affairs. They left the library like this. The two walked along the street, and soon, the street lights on the street were lit up one after another. It seemed that the power outage was over.

Despite this incident, Zeng Hao was not particularly troubled. While thinking about sending Xiao Chen home as soon as possible, he observed the behavior of this eleven-year-old child with his peripheral vision. Compared with other children of the same age, Xiao Chen looked much thinner. Although he was not short, he always liked to keep his head down. At this time, Xiao Chen focused his eyes on the area less than three meters in front of his feet, and stepped forward step by step on the cracks between the bricks.

This habit is somewhat dangerous in public areas, so Xiao Shi’s parents have tried many times to correct it; however, if they force Xiao Shi to hold his head high and face the entire environment he is in, the child will immediately be knocked down by the excessive information pouring into his head and fall into a state of near rigidity; if he is further stimulated at this time, he may even lose control of his emotions and engage in extreme behavior - for this reason, his parents, who are teachers, finally went through the procedures for him to drop out of school.

There was nothing wrong with Xiao Xi's intelligence. According to Zeng Hao's judgment, his intelligence was at least slightly higher than the average level of his peers. However, his parents, who were high school teachers, did not have much time to teach him, and the private tutors hired from institutions always had difficulty communicating with Xiao Xi. After more than a year of repeated attempts, and suffering from frustration and despair, Zeng Hao's accidental appearance was like a blessing from heaven to Xi Xi's parents. They had wanted to offer more formal remuneration, rather than the price paid to college students who did odd jobs during the summer vacation, but Zeng Hao did not accept it, saying that he did not have time to be a full-time private tutor, so he could only help as much as possible. However, the couple later repaid him by connecting him with graduating students, so that he had a job that did not require much effort and was enough to support himself. Although it was not the only option, it made his task much simpler. Or, in the words of the distant guests, it just gave him the illusion of imitating educators.

Is that so? He occasionally thought about it in his spare time, but he had no answer. The main purpose of doing this kind of work is still to complete the goal: first screen suitable customers through a limited network of acquaintances, then obtain accounts on the grounds of doing literature sorting or collecting papers for others, log in to various academic databases, search for keywords that ordinary people would not use, or even directly query papers written by the target... Because he uses the identity accounts of multiple customers, he becomes invisible at the website data level; even if the existence of "Zeng Hao" is determined by deep analysis and address tracking, it cannot be inferred that his motives are problematic.

Even if there really is a pair of eyes in the sky watching the world, they can't find him before he actually takes action. Moreover, those eyes are far from being omnipresent. As long as the neutrino weaponization limiter is not released, the computing speed can only reach a medium or low level; the greater flaw is caused by the special security protocol itself, because the restricted neutrinos cannot be remotely operated without the data device, and "that thing" will be highly dependent on electromagnetic wave communication. Therefore, he has not been found so far, and it is probably difficult to even lock the range... But what about what happened in the library? Why did the old man notice me?
He did not think further on this question. There were too many things he could not explain. Even after his life was completely changed, he understood knowledge that he could never understand in the past, but he was still often confused as before. For example, even though he had completely turned into a 27-year-old adult physically and had no signs of puberty in his appearance, when others talked to him, they would unconsciously treat him like a child.

Even children seem to be able to smell the scent of their own kind. Xiao Shen, who never spoke to strange adults, was willing to accept him as a tutor just by talking to him a few words when his parents took him for an outing. Apart from Xiao Shen, other normal children were rarely afraid of him, and some would even take the initiative to talk to him. What exactly caused this? This phenomenon sometimes made him feel uneasy, as if he had some deep-rooted weakness, but he couldn't find a way to improve it. Just a few months ago, an old guest who came to visit also heard about his troubles, but he just laughed it off and didn't treat it as a dangerous thing at all.

"Isn't this good?" the guest said, "If they can get approval, they won't tell your secret to the adults."

"But why are they the only ones not afraid of me? I haven't shown any kindness to them..."

"Maybe, I feel that you are someone with the same stance." What exactly does this "same stance" mean? If it refers to the similarity of family situations or childhood experiences, the conclusion is too far-fetched. Whether it is Xiao Shen or other children, their personalities and family situations are completely different from those before his rebirth, and there is no basis for sympathy. If you say that the mentality is childish, there are many adults who are stupider and more ignorant than children. After telling the other party such doubts, the guest stopped drawing lines on the notebook and smiled at him as when they first met.

"Not all children like to be close to you. From my experience, only the slightly sensitive and introverted ones will pay special attention to you. In other words, because they find that you don't know how to deal with the outside world like them, and you don't have the right to make your own decisions, so they think you are the same kind - just a slightly larger species."

"You say that, it seems..."

"Like what?"

He thought quietly for a while and said, "It's like a pet dog."

When they were almost at the door of their house, Xiao Chen finally mustered up the courage to look at him. The look of wholehearted dependence on parents would surely show that they were willing to go through fire and water for their children. However, it was illusory to him. Why would anyone place hope in him? He was so weak and incompetent; what he had truly learned, what he was sure he had mastered, and what he could answer confidently was actually no more than Xiao Chen.

"Tomorrow," Xiao Chen asked, "are we still going to the library?"

"Let's wait and see...it looks like there's trouble there. I'll stay at home tomorrow."

Because he had sent Xiao Xi home before 5:30, he did not expect that there would be any adults at home. Unexpectedly, Xi Xi's mother had returned from school earlier and was standing at the door with vegetables. When she saw her son and the tutor coming back early, she was surprised at first, then became nervous, probably worried that Xiao Xi had been stimulated outside again.

"Why are you back so early?"

Zeng Hao did not respond, but patted Xiao Chen's back. After months of practice, Xiao Chen had adapted to going to a relatively quiet place like the library, and he behaved very steadily when he came back. With Zeng Hao's silent encouragement, Xiao Chen stared at his toes and said in the softest voice: "The library has a power outage."

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

After confirming that it was not her son's problem, the mother's face immediately showed joy. She first brought Xiao Chen into the house and asked him to sit in his room, and then invited Zeng Hao to come in and sit for a while. Although she understood that she wanted to take the opportunity to ask about Xiao Chen's recent performance, Zeng Hao still shook her head.

"We may have guests at home tonight. I won't sit down."

Knowing that he was an abandoned child who grew up in an orphanage and had no relatives to associate with, the hostess no longer questioned the guest's identity, but told him in a very gentle tone that "if you have any trouble, you can contact them for help." How did she understand his words? Was it just a polite remark, or did she see what he was worried about at the moment? Although, he didn't think he was worried. No matter how hard he tried to understand his inner thoughts, the only emotion he could be aware of was confusion.

"I'm going home." He said, turning to walk towards the stairs. The hostess came up again and handed him a box of peeled water chestnuts. "Take this home and eat it." She spoke softly as if she was talking to a peer of Xiao Chen. "My friend's family grows it themselves. It tastes fresh and is convenient for entertaining guests."

Hearing this, he wanted to express his gratitude, but also felt a little ridiculous. In the end, he could only nod and put the box into his bag. If the old man from the library finally found his residence, would he really sit down and accept the host's hospitality? Probably not, right? He had no idea how these people would react after finding him. The scene that he had barely constructed through various stories before had been shattered by the real experience of the evening before. The anger, shock or despair that he had expected to appear were completely the patterns he had learned from text or footage; when the situation came to an end, he found that it was different from what he had learned, and his originally fragile confidence in this regard immediately disappeared. There was no need to predict and imagine other people's reactions, just observe the development of reality.

After leaving Xiao Chen's house, he first went to a nearby music store and asked if anyone had stored a guitar in the past two days. The owner told him that no one had stored the instrument. Although it was obviously a proof of good progress, he didn't know whether he should be happy. Instead, he heard the sound of an ancient and elegant piano in the classroom, and he couldn't help but stand outside and listen for a while. After the playing was over, he asked the owner what instrument it was. "That's the pipa." The owner told him, "Are you interested? You can learn it here."

"…Me? It doesn't seem appropriate."

"What's wrong with that? Just learn if you like it."

Having never had the desire to play a certain melody, he shook his head and left. When he walked from the piano shop to the station, it was already completely dark. He boarded the bus to the suburbs. Due to the remote route, this bus was basically not affected by the evening rush hour, and there were always very few passengers. He glanced at it with his peripheral vision and knew that there was no stranger among them, so he sat down in the corner of the back row of the car and began to think about how he should deal with it.

In fact, he didn't have to do anything. The guest had made it clear before departure that even if he was caught by the "eye", his life would not be in danger and he would not be abused. When the guest came back to pick up his luggage for the second time, he was even half-jokingly told to him: "If you encounter problems in your life that cannot be solved in the future, just contact it."

However, he did not want to contact the "eyes". Whether it was unnecessary or a slight desire to win, since he realized that the educator had finally chosen "the one" instead of himself, he could not help but think about the basis. Why was he not chosen? For educators, the tiny difference in computing power between individuals of their species was not worth considering at all. There was only a slight difference between genius and dementia. So, what was valued was probably some kind of systematic structure. Under the computing power level constrained by the limiter, a more suitable algorithm architecture could improve computing efficiency. He thought so... But why was he not suitable? Unconsciously, he would return to this question and then notice the invisible defects in himself again. He could never do things well independently, and even if he had completed them, he did not have a sense of success. In the past two years, whether he was dormant, thinking, observing, or making the final plan after the visit of guests, he was just reviewing his lessons step by step, waiting for the graduation exam. As long as he got a passing grade in the graduation exam, he should naturally know the way out, right? However, even the exam itself was as dull as completing a homework assignment, and it was completely over before he could react.

What did this test prove? Nothing, it seemed. He waited quietly in the bee-humming woods until the warm sun set, the cold moon rose, and footsteps staggered in from outside the woods. Just as the guest said, the opponent's vision was poor, but he could accurately detect the location of the bait box in the dark. He crouched on the ground with the flow aid in his arms, waiting to see what the opponent would do. Whether he called in a well-armed assistant or brought any special weapons, he had made plans in the past few months and just had to follow the plan - in the end, all the arrangements for preventing unexpected events were useless. The goal was just to walk all the way to the trap box and stick the long stick in his hand into the ground, and the bait suddenly disappeared from the trap box. Because the signal of the weight change was sent, the jammer immediately went into action.

If the target ran away immediately, the traps set up around him would have worked, and he wouldn't have needed to finish it off himself; but the target just stood there, looking around as if he was looking for something. So he could only stand up from under the cover, holding the charged flow aid, and walk from the bottom of the hill to the trap point. In the buzzing darkness, they really saw each other for the first time. Although he had seen photos of the target and read all the papers he had participated in publishing, it was still very strange to face the real person. So this is what he looks like, he couldn't help but think to himself.

With the bright moonlight shining through the shade of the trees, the other party also looked at him with some difficulty, as if he was a little surprised by his size and appearance; he also glanced at the nozzle of the flow aid, but did nothing in response. They just looked at each other. Then, the other party said: "Xiao Chu, your..."

Because he didn't know whether he had activated the blocker correctly, he was always worried that the other party might have some spare power. At the moment when the man's lips trembled, he pressed the flow aid without hesitation, fearing the curse. Although it was just a "toy" in the customer's mouth, the huge recoil of this device still made him roll down the hill, and he didn't witness the moment when he completed the test with his own eyes. As he lay on his back in a daze, the fallen linden flowers fell like white snow. The stars were silent, but the bees were whistling and dancing terrifyingly. He got up in a panic, his mind was in a mess, and he relied on instinct to collect the traps around him to prevent them from being stepped on by uninformed passers-by; then he remembered the customer's instructions, so he went back and took away the "magic wand".

Then, under the cold gaze of the stars and the moon, he fled the woods in panic and confusion without even checking the final results of the task. How well did he finish this paper? Because he lost the teacher who could review it, he still doesn't know the answer to this day. He can only sit helplessly on the bus, letting the wheels spin and take him to his residence in the suburbs - about a year ago, in order to facilitate several important equipment tests, he moved there from his shared apartment in the city.

Although this change of address would increase suspicion, since he had chosen a local acquaintance as the intermediary, and the rental process was not done online, it would probably not be so easy to be locked. Even if the "eye" had noticed him now, the priority of the investigation should be very low. So he still had time to react: should he temporarily press the signal transmitter to compete with the "eye" a little? Or should he activate the transmitter after returning and put an end to this matter?

Outside the car window, the houses and shops gradually became sparse, the lights went out, and finally only the desolate countryside under the moonlight remained. The outline of the pine forest trembled eerily at the edge of the night. Looking up at the Jade Palace in the universe, the dark red Shang star had sunk to the southwest; and in the northern part of the sky, the Perseus constellation was emerging from the abyss.

(End of this chapter)