The Record of Unusual Creature

Hearing what Becky said, Hao Ren felt a stream of cold sweat starting to roll down his back. But she was happy-go-lucky as usual and did not detect that anything was amiss. She continued to mumble, “It’s been a month since I left home, I still have two unfinished jobs back there. I’ll become part of the missing person statistics if I still don’t show my face, you know—that’s the reality of being a mercenary; they’ll just assume that you’re KIA and close the case if you don’t report back after a while.”

Hao Ren looked at Becky very cautiously. “Aren’t you happy being here?”

“It’s pretty good here,” said Becky, absent-mindedly. “It’s just that, I feel Iike I can’t keep playing out there all the time. It’s time to go home; after all, this is not my place.”

All of a sudden, reality started to sink in. Becky asked, “Wait a minute… has something gone wrong and I can’t go home? Come on, this is all your organisation’s fault. I was brought here unwillingly!”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry.” Hao Ren waved his hand subconsciously. “I’ve already promised to take you home so, I’ll definitely take you home. But, it will take a while, because…” Hao Ren poked the MDT on the sofa handle, urging it telepathically, “Say something, pacify her!”

The MDT got up and projected a pile of data as well as images via a hologram. “Because the asymmetrical nature of the ectopic information has resulted in a different conversion mechanism for bi-directional and uni-directional teleportation, thus prolonging the waiting time for the crossing of each entity. The crossing process also involves information destruction of the third, sixth and seventh law, so additional calculation is needed. Additionally, the equipment to send you home is currently being cooled down so you may not be able to go home for a while—got it?”

Becky was none the wiser. “What?”

Noticing the blank expression on Becky’s face, Hao Ren let out a long sigh, feeling guilty. “There’s a few procedures to be completed before I can send you home. It won’t be long.”

Becky did not think much about it. She took “it won’t be long” at face value and nodded. “No problem, as long as I’m not stuck here for good. I’ll stick around for a little longer and I’ll pay for my room—I have money now!”

He quietly wiped away his sweat and smiled. It was a close call. But, he knew he could not drag it any further. While Becky and Lily were glued to the idiot box, Hao Ren shot Nangong Wuyue a stare and they both sneaked into the kitchen, bringing along the MDT. He could not alarm Lily either; the husky was known for spilling the beans. If you told her the nuclear launch code, she would not think twice about announcing it to the world. It was wise to keep her in the dark while she was still unaware of it. Allowing her to be occupied with the prawn snack commercial was the right thing to do.

“What are you two doing in here?” asked Vivian, who was cooking in the kitchen. She gave them a what-the-heck glance. “Don’t disturb me.”

“We have a problem. It’s about Becky.” Hao Ren closed the door behind him, then sighed. “How are we going to tell her that her body in The Plane of Dreams has been destroyed by the cosmic will?”

Vivian listened and the problem began to come to light.

The relationship between The Plane of Dreams and the real world was asymmetrical, and The Plane of Dreams in itself, was vulnerable. So, when Becky travelled from her home to Earth, it was partially unidirectional. This meant that she could cross over to Earth in person but not back. She would have to lie in a hibernation pod and go back home in her dream. In other words, she could not enter back into The Plane of Dreams physically. Her body had to stay back, and at the same time, she would not be able to stay for a very long period of time in The Plane of Dreams. She would have to leave once her dream was over, just like Hao Ren and the other earthlings. Such limitations were not a problem for Hao Ren, who only went in for business, but it would be a hopeless frustration for those were originally from The Plane of Dreams. Why could one not go home at will? Why could one only go home in a dream—a dream that ended?

It was like paying to stay in your own house and having to show your temporary residence permit from time to time. And, you would be required to get the f*ck out of your house every half a month or so and stay in a hotel. Who would have liked that?

“Didn’t you say that you were going to solve this technical issue?” Hao Ren jabbed the MDT. “Where’s your solution?”

“I’ve checked. Strictly speaking, it’s not a matter of whether we could, it’s about whether we should.” The MDT sighed. “I’m going to be honest with you; if you really want to send Becky back, you just have to request for Madam Raven’s intervention, or get authorisation for special teleportation to bring people back in there, disregarding the travel limitation of The Plane of Dreams. For the Empire, this is just a peace of cake; but the consequences are: you risk puncturing a hole in the real world by violating the rules of teleportation. The Plane of Dreams is unstable, leaking and having problems all the time; starting from the point of teleportation, the whole planet if not half of the galaxy, could be vaporised. Would you shoulder the responsibility?”

Hao Ren’s face instantly turned grim. Even the simple-minded Lily would not agree, much less him.

He understood what the MDT was trying to say; sending Becky back was impossible without taking high risks and consequences, it was a destructive action. It may have worked if the reality wall of The Plane of Dreams was still in good shape but now, even the almighty goddess, Raven 12345 was scratching her head, trying to patch the shaky wall. Sending people back in by boring a hole at this point of time was just asking for trouble.

“You can’t make an omelette without breaking the eggs,” said Vivian as she left the kitchen with a rice pot.

Amazed by her philosophical remark, Hao Ren tried to laugh. But the problem was he did not even have the “eggs”—the universe belonged to the goddess; she would not put the world at risk for the sake of one girl.

Nangong Wuyue frowned as she fell into deep though. Then, she said, “It may or may not happen. The Wall of Reality is fragile, but that doesn’t mean it would certainly crumble. We may be able to send Becky through without shaking it too much.”

The MDT wobbled and said, “Right. It’s all about probability. However, even if sending Becky back poses one-tenth of a chance of puncturing the wall, would you risk it?”

Hao Ren was on a sticky wicket; nine out ten: things would turn out to be all right, one out of ten: human extinction.

“There’s something I don’t understand: while we can bring things in and leave them behind, why can’t we do the same with people?” Hao Ren recalled Y’zaks selling his demon sword in The Plane of Dreams. The sword was not expelled when they woke up from their dreams, it instead became physical in The Plane of Dreams.

“Because intelligent beings affect information,” the MDT explained. “People think, observe, interact and process information. At the same time, people themselves also generate and cause information to multiply by way of memory. A peson is not just a lump of carbohydate, but also an entanglement point of complex information; everything a human touches, records, observes, and is curious about would connect in the realm of information. An individual possesses a limited amount of information, but the volume of information he comes into contact with is astounding. As long as the individual lives and observes the world, he would be more and more involved in the surrounding information. Remember this: information is everything, and everything is information. An observer’s involvement in the real world is deep and endless. Especially the Wall of Reality between The Plane of Dreams and the Surface World; it’s in an ambigous state where it’s easily affected by its observers. Non-living things are different. They have little impact. After all, their information is finite. The cosmic will easily digest them even if they’re very polluting as long as their impact is finite.

“Metaphorically speaking, a bullet isn’t as damaging as a single virus droplet simply because the former is limited in the damage it could cause while the latter could spread and its threat is endless.”

As Hao Ren came to grips with the truth, he spread out his hands, feeling dejected. “Probably, it would help if we whack Becky into a vegetable…”

The MDT jabbed his stomach lightly. “It’s good to be creative but being senseless about it is retarded.”

“Do we really have no choice?” asked Nangong Wuyue, still retaining a last glimmer of hope. “I think there has to be some way.”

The MDT thought for a moment and said, “If you insist… there’s another way.”

Hao Ren and Nangong Wuyue eyeballed the MDT immediately.

“Find an existing loophole,” the MDT said. “An open loophole is the safest.”