The weather was cold and gloomy, but the snow had not yet fallen.

On the way back from the hospital to the internet cafe, the temperature seemed to drop by another 10 degrees.

Lin Chaoxi bought some antipyretic medicine at the pharmacy near the Internet cafe, specifically asking for the kind that wouldn't make her drowsy after taking it.

The pharmacist at the drugstore probably saw that she was young, so he pulled her aside and asked her a few more questions, especially reminding her that if her condition was serious, she should seek medical attention immediately, as a long-term cough could easily develop into pneumonia.

Anyway, there is nothing to be afraid of if too many flags are set. Lin Chaoxi sniffed and lifted the thick cotton curtain of the Internet cafe, and the hot and humid air in the room hit his face.

She walked back to her seat, picked up the cup, went to the water dispenser to get a glass of water, and followed Brother Pei's instructions to take the fever-reducing medicine first.

Although she felt helpless emotionally, and Pei Zhi's gaze was still deeply imprinted in her mind when she left, she felt that she still had the strength to suppress the helplessness and despair.

Without thinking about Pei Zhi's final expression or calculating how tight the time was, Lin Chaoxi turned on the computer again and observed the morning data.

The first thing she had to do was to sort these documents according to the data categories she wanted. Thinking of this, she opened the notebook on the table, which contained the processes she had already organized, as well as how to classify and organize the data.

Lin Chaoxi calmed herself down. The main focus was the new urban traffic volume. She sorted the data related to this part into a new folder, and downloaded a file name sorting program to rename and arrange them.

She had calculated in her mind how long these steps would take, and she told herself that everything was in place, but in practice, the process was often anxiously complicated.

Time passed by, and she finally finished the first round of sorting out the documents, converting some Excel documents into CSV format. It was such a simple operation, and when she finished it, it was already past four in the afternoon.

Outside the window, a blizzard was pressing down on the city, and the clouds were as dark as ink.

Lin Chaoxi was startled for a moment, perhaps because of the effect of the antipyretic medicine. She glanced at the lower right corner of the computer again.

At 17:11, she had already spent three times longer than expected, so she was very sure that she would not be able to complete the program rewrite at the current pace.

On the computer desktop was a document she had sorted out of city traffic data, the screen was blindingly bright. On the other side, the scroll bar of the unsorted folder was as thin as a straight line.

This is what executing a plan is like. When progress is slow and difficult to achieve, even the strongest of beliefs will be worn down and become fragile.

The high fever caused her body to ache and her head to split. She felt like she was wrapped in a burning bubble, with many twisted and bizarre plots always appearing before her eyes. In other words, she seemed to be in a dark fragment of space.

She could see herself sitting in a corner of the shabby Internet cafe, facing the huge orange-red word "Net" pasted on the window. Due to the temperature difference between inside and outside, the window was covered with a layer of white mist.

She could also see her hand dragging the mouse, the software alternating on the screen, a white background and a large amount of thin black data.

She navigates through the import wizard, defines some additional options, selects the target table, and imports the content into the MySQL database.

She found that she moved very slowly, at least much slower than usual. Sometimes she would suddenly lag behind because her brain could not react quickly, and she could only look through her notebook and write one or two notes.

The sky outside the window was getting darker and darker, and the street lights gradually came on.

After a small amount of data was imported, she began to adjust the program, but then -

unboundlocalerror: local variable 'road' referenced before assignment

indexerror: list index outrange

…

The constant error messages made her scalp tingle, as if something was constantly torturing the nerves in her brain that were tortured by the high fever. But the part of her consciousness that was still clear told her to calm down, you are modifying the program, and it is normal to have errors.

But the errors kept appearing, and she was exhausted from searching and correcting them, as if she had returned to the most helpless time when she first started learning this thing. The time at the bottom of the screen kept jumping backwards, and she could even hear the ticking sound of the wall clock in the Internet cafe.

If only I had more time, Lin Chaoxi kept thinking about it. The tip of the ballpoint pen rubbed across the thin book, and she looked down at the characters she had unconsciously drawn, the shallow and sloppy e=mc^2.

Lin Chaoxi paused with her pen and stared at the thin notebook. The light from the Internet cafe was scattered through the hazy smoke. She suddenly realized that it didn't matter if she couldn't finish it.

Yes.

The thought “It doesn’t matter if I can’t finish it” suddenly occurred to me.

But it is very likely that it has been hidden deep in her emotions, in that dark and desolate corner, suppressed by her many emotions, but it will suddenly burst out when she does not want to face reality.

The characters on the thin book made her clearly aware of everything she was experiencing now - whether it was the sounds she heard or the air she breathed, or her running yesterday and every anxious click of the mouse now, even including the hand she held just now, all of which were just a period of time that existed in the past.

It presents another mode of development of the storyline in the parallel world and gives her the illusion that she can change something.

But the fact is, the past is the past. Everything she does now is just to make up for the regrets of the past.

But for her, the regret had already happened.

In the real world, Pei Zhi is the young man she has loved for many years but never had the chance to confess her love to. He has already boarded the plane at the airport and is about to go to a foreign country to study.

Lao Lin is the 45-year-old middle-aged man suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He has packed up all his drafts and made full preparations to slowly lose his memory.

And she was just a girl who was unwilling to let everything end like this, so she traveled through time and space to "cheat" for her father.

Now, Lao Lin's thesis has been basically completed.

All she had to do now was to turn off the computer in the Internet cafe, go back to the guesthouse, open the document that Lao Lin had placed on the computer in the guesthouse, and start reciting.

Then go back.

As long as she brought back Lao Lin's thesis, she would have completed the entire mission of this trip.

Yes, all she had to do was go back, and she was destined to go back.

The feeling of relaxation is addictive. The air conditioner in the Internet cafe blows a gentle breeze. Lin Chaoxi feels like he is soaking in warm water, and his eyes wander out the window.

On the window facing her was a red-orange word "网" with curled corners. People were coming and going on the street below, and the stoves on the street in the roadside snack shops were emitting white hot steam. Farther away, the whole city was immersed in the peaceful lights of the winter night.

Fatigue came over her like a tide, and she wanted to lie down on the table and take a nap.

Lin Chaoxi leaned over the table and gradually closed his eyes.

"Your database is too big."

Like an auditory hallucination, she heard a very clear and lively boy's voice.

She forced herself to open her eyes and turned her head to see a boy who looked like a primary school student standing next to her. The boy had a huge gaming headset on his head, bit a strawberry-flavored lollipop, and had big eyes.

"This is Python, right? I sat behind you and played games for three days, and watched you edit the program for three days." The boy came over like a chatterbox. He pointed at her screen and said in a voice that smelled like strawberry candy, "Here, the counting starts at 0, and the length of the last digit of the character is reduced by 1."

Lin Chaoxi struggled to get up, glanced at the error message on the screen, and realized that this was indeed the problem.

"Thank you," she said.

“You’re welcome,” the little boy said, “but that doesn’t solve your problem.”

Lin Zhaoxi looked at the boy: "My question?"

"LookupError, the base class for invalid data query." The little boy said to himself while looking at the screen. "The database is overloaded. Your database was much smaller before."

In an instant, cold sweat slid down her back.

In the dim space, someone's computer suddenly went out and shouted "Network Administrator", while someone else asked the boss to send a bowl of Laotan pickled cabbage noodles to the table. The tinnitus started again, and she felt that her lips tasted bloody.

She suddenly realized that the problem she faced was arguably one of the most unsolvable problems in computing.

The boy kept talking: "Your calculation amount is increasing exponentially. I suggest you find a normal online game server to run the program, but it may not work. Who knows where there will be a bug? Otherwise, why don't you give it a try?"

"Emperor Yongzheng..."

"Specially used to treat the Eighth Prince (bug)!"

The joke was ridiculous, but Lin Chaoxi couldn't laugh at all.

The little boy's eyes were bright. Perhaps because his intelligence level was higher than that of his peers, he spoke in an adult tone that was not consistent with his age, and he was eager to communicate with older people.

For some reason, Lin Zhaoxi thought of Pei Zhi, even though they were completely different.

"Is there anything else we can do?" She heard herself say this in a dry voice.

The boy pondered for a moment, snapped his fingers, and suddenly became excited: "Quantum computer!"

The hope that suddenly arose was shattered again, and Lin Chaoxi felt that he might have really gone crazy.

At that moment just now, she almost put all her hopes on the little boy she met by chance in the shabby Internet cafe.

"Well, I'm just kidding, don't be sad." The boy said quickly, "If you can't solve the hardware problem, start with the data and design a new mathematical model."

"Design a new mathematical model." Lin Chaoxi repeated the sentence.

"If you can design a better model and load the data in a more reasonable way, or simplify your original data through processing, that's fine too. But in the computer field, mathematical models are the most difficult. Most programmers can only write code, and those who can make models start with an annual salary of millions."

Perhaps because her face was too ugly, the boy became cautious: "Are you angry? My boss said that I talk too much and I'm likely to get beaten up when I go out. Do I talk too much?"

"No, thank you very much." Lin Chaoxi wanted to reach out and rub the boy's head, but he didn't have any strength.

"My name is Wang Chao, nice to meet you." The boy said goodbye in a gentlemanly way, and finally said, "You don't have to feel inferior if you can't make models. After all, even I can't do it now."

The little boy was proud and sincere like most gifted teenagers. After he finished speaking, he left.

In fact, before he talked about the final conclusion, Lin Chaoxi already knew the answer - she couldn't do it.

In just a few breaths, she experienced the moment when hope was ignited and then shattered again several times. She no longer felt the sadness she had before, but instead had a clearer self-awareness.

Her relaxation just now, all the thoughts of "this is all in the past", were just her unwillingness to face her own incompetence.

The computer screen is dotted with mottled bright red characters, like a teacher's corrections on test papers from small to large, right, wrong, right and wrong.

Lin Zhaoxi closed her eyes, her head full of red wounds, intricate and dense like blood vessels. That was what she had seen on Pei Zhi's arm just now, very shallow, some had already scabbed over, but there was also new skin and flesh.

Those suppressed images kept coming out - Pei Zhi's wrist being withdrawn, the sound of his voice, and the last look he gave her. These images kept being edited, pieced together, and looped.

At a certain moment, some emotions that had been suppressed for a long time seemed to be finally released in a way that she could not perceive.

She suddenly understood Pei Zhi's last look.

That was the deepest reluctance and attachment to his mother. He was not forced to stay there, nor did he commit suicide because of the torture from his mother. He just couldn't resolve the conflict between them.

He also has a solution.

Lin Chaoxi once thought that as long as one works hard enough, one can always get what he wants.

But in fact, she couldn't save Lao Lin at all, and all her companionship never reduced any of Pei Zhi's pain.

After all, even Lao Lin was forced to give up mathematics because of her birth. In real life, being a genius is not the answer to all problems, because geniuses are often tortured by fate.

Now, she was forced to give up.

She moved the cursor to the program closing button. The Internet cafe was filled with the sound of young people screaming in surprise. She looked out the window and found that the first snowflake of this winter had finally fallen from the sky.

The street lights illuminated the snowflakes clearly.

She held the mouse tightly and finally burst into tears.