This is the hall located in the middle of the first floor of the main building. The double carved wooden doors leading to the outside of the building are tightly closed.
Next to the long solid wood table, the three people sitting on the left were the "front row" of the other three groups - Ling An, Duan Jingming and Tang Yao, while the four seats on the right were still empty.
"Mr. Song, please take a seat."
Dr. Jin extended his hand and gestured to the last empty seat on the left.
Song Yecheng walked over as he was told, sat down, and smiled and nodded at Ling An and the others. Then Dr. Jin announced, "Okay, now all the volunteers are here."
Hearing this, Song Yecheng couldn't help but feel a little surprised. He glanced at the four empty seats across from him in confusion, thinking, "Are they all here now? What about Jiang Que and the others?"
Before he could think, Dr. Jin had already put his hands on the table and said, "Today is July 15, 2020. I am very happy to welcome you here."
He smiled politely at the four of them and continued, "The four of you participated in the first phase of the 'Memory Burial' experiment together last year, but I imagine you no longer remember each other. So why not introduce yourselves again and get to know each other again?"
This part of the self-introduction is not so much to let them "reacquaint themselves" as it is to let the audience know the roles they have been given in this script.
Although Song Yecheng was curious about the whereabouts of the remaining four people, he did not disrupt the process. He turned his gaze to Ling An, who was closest to Dr. Jin, and waited for him to start first according to the order.
Ling An was a true variety show veteran, having appeared on countless shows, so he was quite familiar with this opening routine. Upon hearing this, he immediately looked at the other three and said naturally, "My name is Ling An. I'm an agent. I've helped many artists become famous in the entertainment industry."
After he finished speaking, Duan Jingming continued in his broken Mandarin: "My name is Duan Jingming. I'm a website operator. My main job is data maintenance and website security management."
After saying that, he turned to look at Tang Yao, who understood and said, "My name is Tang Yao. I used to be a nurse for a long time. In the past two years, I have been promoted to head nurse."
Song Yecheng listened carefully to their introductions. Although he didn't hear any valuable clues, he still remembered the identities of several people firmly. Then he said, "My name is Song Yecheng. I'm a lawyer with a winning rate of nearly 100%."
The other three nodded, and Ling An in the front row immediately asked enthusiastically, "How did you know you had to participate in the second stage?"
As soon as these words were spoken, the other three people, including Song Yecheng, did not rush to answer. Instead, they looked at each other with subtle expressions, as if they were trying to see who would speak first.
Seeing this, everyone immediately understood what was going on - everyone should have received the rule that "you can't lie but you can conceal something", so when faced with questions, they always subconsciously want to keep some cards in reserve for themselves and see what others say first.
"What about you?" Song Yecheng reacted very quickly and immediately asked Ling An with a smile, "How did you remember this?"
Ling An's original intention was to strike first, but he ended up shooting himself in the foot. He couldn't help but choke on his laughter before saying cunningly, "I left a hint for myself last year."
This answer was ambiguous, and it was the same as not saying anything, because everyone was obviously in the same situation, but Song Yecheng did not expose it. Instead, he followed without thinking: "Me too."
Hearing him say this, Tang Yao and Duan Jingming beside him immediately followed suit:
"Me too."
“Me too.”
Seeing them becoming more cautious than each other, Dr. Jin, who was watching from the front, couldn't help but laugh and said, "Actually, I can help you answer this question."
The four of them turned their gazes to him as he explained methodically, "Before Phase One began, we had already considered the potential for forgetfulness that would result from the experiment. Therefore, as a preliminary step, we had you leave reminders for yourselves so that you could attend Phase Two on time this year. Some of you used scheduled emails, some used calendar reminders, and some even asked trusted friends and family to relay the messages."
These words seemed to be an answer, but in fact they were still very obscure. Although all the "prompt methods" had been listed, the users corresponding to these methods were not specified. In other words, they still could not determine which method the other three people except themselves used.
Dr. Jin's role was clearly similar to that of a game DM, responsible for guiding the general direction of the program. So, he didn't let them ponder for too long, but quickly returned to the process:
"The goal of this second phase of the experiment is to consolidate the amnesia effect achieved in the first phase. To ensure a smoother process, we have assigned each of you an instructor who will guide and monitor your progress throughout the entire process."
Hearing this, the four of them suddenly realized something. Sure enough, the next second, Dr. Jin stood up and raised his hand to the other door on the left side of the hall, which was opposite the electronic door that Song Yecheng had come out of earlier, making an invitation gesture: "Please welcome the four experimental instructors--"
As he spoke, the green light on the metal door suddenly lit up, and then the door panels slowly opened to both sides. Lin Yan, Jin Fuhan, He Jingsheng and Jiang Que walked out one after another and entered the hall.
At this time, they had all changed into uniform blue shirts and white coats, with their identity badges pinned on their chests, looking like experimenters.
Song Yecheng had never seen Jiang Que dressed in such a professional manner before, so his eyes lit up when he saw him. He couldn't take his eyes off him from the moment he appeared, and watched him intently as he walked all the way to the table and to the seat opposite him.
"Hello, Mr. Song."
Jiang Que strictly adhered to the "strangers" setting and extended his hand to him seriously: "I am your laboratory instructor, Bai Yeling."
Song Yecheng stood up. Although the other three groups were greeting each other, he seemed to be able to hear only Jiang Que's voice. The "Mr. Song" that Jiang Que had never used to address him seemed to have some strange magic power, which made even his Oscar-level acting skills almost unable to control his expression.
"Hello," Song Yecheng held back a smile and extended his hand. A hint of mischief flashed in his eyes. He playfully hooked his palm while shaking hands, but said seriously, "Can I call you Teacher Bai?"
Jiang Que was stunned for a moment, then he understood and smiled: "...Okay."
"Everyone, please take a seat."
Dr. King gestured toward both sides of the long table.
Jiang Que and the other three pulled out their chairs and sat directly opposite their group in front of the stage, while Ling An and the other three also sat back down.
When sitting down, Song Yecheng's eyes accidentally swept across the nameplate on Jiang Que's chest, and found that in addition to his name "Bai Ye Ling" and position "Experimental Instructor", there was also a number: 80500202.
Song Yecheng glanced to the side and saw that He Jingsheng's nameplate also had a number: 60500202. However, Fu Han and Lin Yan were sitting diagonally in front of him and quite far away, so the number on the nameplate could not be seen clearly for the time being.
After everyone sat down, Dr. Jin said, "This experiment will officially begin tomorrow. The base has prepared a sumptuous dinner for you tonight. I hope you will enjoy it."
As soon as he finished speaking, several staff members dressed as chefs came out from an inconspicuous small door in the corner of the hall, pushing a food cart and placing a variety of meals and drinks on the table.
Although this meal is in the plot, it is equivalent to solving the real problems outside the plot - it is dinner time at this time, and all the guests present have just arrived and are indeed still hungry. Even if this part is not in the plot, they still have to eat.
Everyone present was used to being followed by cameras, so even though there were cameras everywhere around them, it had no effect on them. However, eating was not the main storyline after all, and everyone was very clear about this, so no one dawdled and wasted time, but just filled their stomachs quickly and efficiently.
They also chatted with each other during the meal, but because everyone currently had too little information, even an old hand like Ling An who tried to "trick" people into talking couldn't get anything out of them, and in the end it just seemed like they were just joking.
Half an hour later.
Seeing that everyone had almost finished eating, Dr. Jin quickly clapped his hands and said, "Let's go. I'll take you to the dormitory."
As he spoke, he asked everyone to leave and led them through the hall to the back.
After walking up one flight of stairs and reaching the second-floor corridor, Dr. Jin stretched out his hands and gestured to the left and right.
"This floor is the accommodation area. On the left is the instructor's dormitory, and on the right is the volunteer dormitory. Your names are written on the doors. The lights in the entire building will be turned off at 10 pm and enter night mode. The experiment will officially begin tomorrow. I hope you can get a good rest tonight. I wish you sweet dreams."
After saying that, he smiled and nodded politely, then turned around and left the second floor without looking back.
Although his words sounded like a closing remark, several people quickly realized that today's recording had not ended there, because all the directors and cameramen who were following the filming were still doing their jobs meticulously, with no intention of calling it a day.
"Then shall we... go back to the room first?" Tang Yao asked them uncertainly.
Song Yecheng and Jiang Que exchanged glances, and the other groups also exchanged glances before nodding in agreement: "Okay, let's all go to the dormitory first."
As they spoke, they followed Dr. Jin's instructions and split into two groups, heading towards the left and right areas of the corridor.
There were exactly eight rooms in the entire corridor. Each door was indeed labeled with a name. The doors were very far apart, and the door locks were the same as those downstairs, electronic induction locks that were opened using a communicator.
After finding their own room, they each took out their communicator and placed it on the sensing area.
With a few soft "beep" sounds, the doors opened one after another. At this moment, a voice suddenly came from the end of the corridor: "Ouch!"
Everyone turned their heads to look, only to see Ling An take an exaggerated step back, his hands in a Wing Chun starting stance, facing the door with extreme vigilance.
"What's wrong?" Song Yecheng wondered.
Ling An turned around and said, "Aren't you afraid of some trap on the door?"
Everyone: “…”
As a veteran in variety shows, Ling An has probably been pranked on many shows, and this method is indeed common in variety shows. So when they heard him say this, although they were not quite sure, they still couldn't help but be a little vigilant.
So, they all chose to stretch out a finger, carefully poked the door and pushed it open.
Facts have proven that there is no such agency.
But as the door opened, the headlights in the room automatically lit up.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief but also felt a little amused. After looking at each other across the corridor, they all stepped into the room.
In Song Yecheng's dormitory.
As soon as he stepped into the room and took in the surroundings, he couldn't help but exclaim, "Huh?" "This room...why does it look familiar?"
This familiarity was very strange, and he couldn't tell where it came from specifically, but the overall visual effect made him feel as if he had been here before, and even had a strange illusion.
But this illusion only lasted for a brief moment. When he concentrated his attention and looked at it a second time, he could no longer catch it.
Song Yecheng blinked in confusion, but since the filming hadn't ended yet and the director and cameraman had followed him into the room, he knew something else was bound to happen. So he didn't just stand there in a daze. He closed the door and looked around the room carefully with an examining attitude.
This room is about 40 to 50 square meters, about the same size as a single room in a hotel. There is a dressing mirror in the left corner, and a 1.8-meter-high bed in the middle. There are bedside tables and wardrobes against the wall next to the bed, and a carpet with simple patterns on the floor.
In addition, this room is equipped with a private bathroom, which is located directly opposite the end of the bed.
After scanning all the furnishings one by one, Song Yecheng quickly noticed a card standing on the bedside table.
He walked to the bedside and picked it up. He found it was an instruction manual for the base communicator, so he read it while repeating: "Voice call, text message... real-time intercom..."
Following the camera, Song Yecheng took out his communicator and debugged it according to the instructions in the manual. After mastering the operation of various functions, he put the card back to its original place, bent down and opened the drawer of the bedside table.
There is a pen and a notepad in the first drawer, with the title of SOS Memory Research Base printed on the notepad.
There is a flashlight in the second drawer.
The third layer is a color map.
That was a floor plan of the base's main building:
The map was divided into four parts, each with four floors, and various passages and areas marked on each floor - in addition to the first-floor lobby and second-floor accommodation area they had already visited, the third floor was the experimental area and office area, and the fourth floor was the archive room and central control room.
"These things should be useful later, right?"
Song Yecheng glanced at the camera lens interactively, then decisively took out the things from the drawer and placed them on the bedside table. Then he closed the drawer, stood up, turned around and opened the wardrobe.
There was a spare set of new bedding in the closet, a set of clothes similar to hospital scrubs hanging on the hanger above, and a drawer on each side below, nothing else.
Song Yecheng first flipped through the bedding, then searched the two pockets of his scrubs, only to find nothing inside. He then squatted down and opened the bottom drawer.
In the left drawer was a bundle of dark blue rope with two gourd-shaped metal safety buckles connected at both ends. It looked like a climbing rope.
In the right drawer was a half-new IC card with the base logo and the words "Researcher Pass" printed on the front. The back also indicated the area that the card allowed access to. It seemed to be a personal item left here by an employee of the base.
Song Yecheng didn't know what they were used for for the time being, so he put them together with the things he had found before, then closed the wardrobe door and turned around to check the bed, under the bed and the carpet under his feet.
After checking these, he clapped his hands and stood up, looking around the room again to make sure there was no place to hide anything. He couldn't help but look at the independent bathroom in the room.
In fact, he felt that it was unlikely that the program crew would hide props or clues in the bathroom, but out of rigor, he still stepped in and carefully searched every corner inside, even the water tank behind the toilet.
The result was indeed nothing.
However, just as he opened the last remaining cabinet above the sink and found that it contained only some regular toiletries, and closed the cabinet door, a series of crisp electronic prompts suddenly came from outside -
"Ding Dong Ding Ling Yao——"
Song Yecheng's first reaction was that it was the doorbell, so he quickly walked out of the bathroom. But when the prompt sound rang again, he was surprised to find that it came from the direction of the dressing mirror in the corner.
At this moment, the mirror was undergoing strange changes——
In addition to constantly emitting warning sounds, its outer frame also emitted a faint light, which flowed vaguely around the mirror in a clockwise direction, as if tempting people to approach.
Song Yecheng walked to the mirror in surprise. The prompt sound stopped immediately. The next second, a few lines of light golden text appeared in the mirror:
Today, you finally arrived at the base and met Dr. Jin, the head of the base, as well as several volunteers who had participated in the first phase together.
Song Yecheng quickly realized that this second-person narrative style, like the one on the LED screen in the small room downstairs, was a form of immersive character empathy:
You have no recollection of those volunteers, but the instructor assigned to you by the base feels incredibly familiar, like an old friend. The dormitory you've been assigned to also feels familiar—if I'm guessing correctly, this is the room you stayed in last year, and that instructor is your former lab instructor.
After reading this, Song Yecheng couldn't help but admire the design of the script, because although this psychological activity was just a plot content, it perfectly matched his real feelings at the moment -
The new identities of Ling An and his friends make them "strangers" who need to be re-understood, while Jiang Que and this dormitory perfectly present the "déjà vu" part.
The words on the mirror faded and disappeared, and then the next paragraph emerged:
Although you acted naturally and appropriately at dinner, you were actually not at peace inside. As you said in your email, you know yourself very well, and the loss of memory makes you curious and uneasy. You can't help but want to know what exactly you have forgotten.
Song Yecheng couldn't help but laugh.
Indeed, from an outsider's perspective, the forgotten memory is just a suspense, but if it is the owner of the memory, it is the missing part in his mind, and you can imagine how strong the desire to get it back will be.
After this text disappeared, the next paragraph emerged:
After dinner, you return to your room. In the privacy of your own room, your curiosity grows stronger. The anxiety generated by your thirst for knowledge prompts you to search every cabinet and drawer in the room. To your surprise, you find a base floor plan and a researcher pass that allows access to certain areas.
Seeing this, Song Yecheng suddenly realized——
No wonder the character empathy link was suddenly triggered. It turned out that it was because he completed the hidden task of "searching all the drawers and cabinets in the room and finding the correct props"?
The text in the mirror continues:
[The appearance of these two things gave you an unexpected inspiration, which made you involuntarily come up with a certain idea and make a bold decision for it——]
Song Yecheng immediately realized that this might mean the release of a mission. He couldn't help but perk up and stare at the mirror. Sure enough, the next second, a line of bold red text appeared in front of him:
You decide to go to the archives alone after lights out to look for your experimental records from last year.
Good job.
Song Yecheng couldn't help but mutter in his heart.
This is not only a mission, but also a mission that requires stealing in the middle of the night?
At this time, the words on the mirror and the halo around the frame had all faded and disappeared, returning to normal as if nothing had happened.
Song Yecheng took out his communicator and checked the time.
21:40
He flashed the screen towards the camera. "It's 9:40 now. Dr. King said lights out at 10 p.m. every night, which means we still have 20 minutes. We can get ready first."
After saying that, he turned and walked to the bedside and sat down. He took the base map and pass card from the bedside table and used the next twenty minutes to confirm the specific location and route of the archive room. He also briefly reviewed everything that had happened so far.
Although they hadn't communicated anything interesting during the dinner, Song Yecheng had keenly noticed a problem from the few lines Dr. Jin said when introducing the characters.
The position of the experimental instructor is actually very delicate.
According to the original program plan, the eight of them should be divided into four groups of two, with each group in a competitive relationship, while the two people in front of and behind the scenes in the group are in a cooperative relationship.
But judging from their current identities, Song Yecheng and his four companions are all "outside" volunteers, while Jiang Que and his four companions are all "internal" instructors affiliated with the base. This seems to naturally divide them into two camps.
In addition, the gameplay of this show is also very strange. It is neither like a script-killing game that requires "guessing the murderer" nor like an escape room that requires "finding a way out". So far, even the ultimate goal or the way to win has not been determined.
So, what is the gameplay?
As his thoughts were tossing and turning, time passed by minute by minute.
21:45
…
21:50
…
21:55
…
The moment the clock hand jumped to 22:00, the overhead light suddenly went out with a "click", and the whole room was plunged into darkness.
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