Extra seven
Pang Li changed out of her lab coat and signed her name on the confidentiality agreement, writing it down one stroke at a time. She had memorized the terms by heart, but she didn't know the final outcome of the experiment.
Apart from seeing Li Rong wake up with my own eyes, the rest of the things can only be guessed through my imagination - since the volunteer woke up, this experiment should be successful, right?
The only surviving volunteer probably got what he wanted.
She held the packed supplies and greeted a colleague with whom she had worked for a year. It was just a simple greeting, and then they hurriedly went about their own business.
Pang Li walked to the front door and cooperated with the instrument to scan faces and fingerprints.
Are you sure you want to delete your personal information? She glanced at her check-in information and reached out to press the confirmation button on the screen.
For her, the one-year experiment was over. After that, she would just take a two-week break and then be assigned to other research to follow up on the next experiment.
Pang Li watched the progress bar continue to move forward, but she didn't reach out to close the pop-up window notifying her of the completion of the purge. She simply hugged the object in her arms tightly and walked out of the research center.
The hot summer wind blew her hair past her ears, and she knew she would no longer have anything to do with this experiment. This busy year now seemed like a blink of an eye to her. Yesterday, she seemed to be imagining how important the data she would be responsible for would be to the theoretical research.
Today she left the place she had longed for for a long time, carrying the things she had prepared when she came. She got on the car prepared for her by the research center and did not look back at the building behind her.
She had some doubts about what she loved and the purpose of this experiment - it seemed that some things were completely different from what she had originally imagined.
But she couldn't do anything but sign a confidentiality agreement to hide this experience. Pang Li closed her eyes and leaned against the car window, the scenery outside the window kept passing by.
Had the theory they so passionately pursued truly paid off in this experiment? She drifted off to a light sleep, subconsciously clutching the object in her arms tighter, maintaining the necessary silence as she welcomed the new life that was about to begin.
Li Rong stood in front of the ward, waiting for the final test results. If the data didn't fluctuate too much, he would be able to take Li Qingyue home.
Xue Heng held his trembling fingertips, gently put his arm around his waist and comforted him, "Everything will be fine."
Li Ronghui held his hand, suppressing his subconscious trembling. With Xue Heng by his side, he could indeed let go of many things and not think about them. Even at this moment, he could still feel that peace.
The doctor in charge of the examination left the room, and Li Rong went forward to listen to his instructions on the next precautions. In fact, he didn't hear much of what he said, only the congratulations remained firmly in his mind.
It seems like everything is over, there is nothing more important left, and the only two people I care about are now by my side.
So he was inevitably a little dazed. He nodded instinctively and wrote down the points that needed attention. He didn't even know when the doctor left.
Fortunately, someone woke him up. Li Rong heard the familiar voice and turned back to look for the source of the sound.
"Li Rong," Xue Heng helped push Li Qingyue who was sitting in a wheelchair, and called his name with a frown.
Today was the last check-up, and Li Qingyue changed into her regular clothes, which were lent to her by the doctor - a white short-sleeved shirt with a pattern of brilliantly blooming wildflowers printed on her chest.
The girl's voice was choked with sobs, but she looked at him firmly, "Brother."
Li Rong responded to the two calls and slowly turned and walked a few steps away. He reached out and touched Li Qingyue's face, smiling beautifully, "It's okay, it's all over."
Then he stood up and pushed the wheelchair with Xue Heng towards the accommodation arranged for them by the research center.
A colorful bird perched on a branch near the window, hiding from the direct sunlight in the shade of the tree, and tilting its neck to peck at its own messy down feathers.
The summer shadows were a little long, and the wind blew through the dense green leaves, easing the heat of the past few days.
Fang Luochun closed the curtains, blocking the incoming sunlight through the light-colored fabric. The conference table behind him was piled with data recently collected by the instruments, from the beginning to the end of the experiment, every day and every time.
She turned around and stood beside the long brown table, not even looking through the notes inside. Someone knocked on the conference room door, and when she looked over, she heard a series of apologies.
The student in the white coat lowered his head, his voice revealing the embarrassment and nervousness of having come to the wrong place. He did not dare to look up to see which leader he had disturbed.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry." He lowered his head, clutching the pen he had just received between his fingers. "Hello - how do I get to the lab?"
Fang Luochun walked closer, glanced at the badge he was wearing, and identified which group of new experiments he belonged to. "Go out from here and go downstairs. Professor Li's laboratory is in the building opposite."
The student thanked her repeatedly and apologized several times as she left the meeting room. She walked back to where she had been standing, not paying any attention to the accident. "No need to close the door."
Fang Luochun said this, watching the light from the corridor shine in. The light shone on the paper, most of the data was still hidden in the shadows, but it was all arranged neatly, one by one, one by one.
She closed her eyes and listened to the soft ticking of the clock hanging in the conference room.
Then, footsteps came from the corridor, approaching the conference room. Aside from the student who had just mistakenly barged in, this door was naturally reserved for the person she was waiting for.
She had never been wrong in this matter.
"Teacher." Fang Luochun whispered first, then slowly opened his eyes and looked at the person who came.
Wu Chuannan walked into the darkened conference room with his hands behind his back. He had to admit that he was getting old. He chose not to turn on the lights to illuminate the piles of data on the long table.
He pulled out the chair on the opposite side, and the wooden legs of the chair rubbed against the floor, making an extremely harsh sound. But no one mentioned it.
Wu Chuannan sat down and reached out to steady his glasses that were about to slip off. He looked at his most proud student, who was no longer his student.
"When are you leaving, today or tomorrow?" He straightened out the papers that were a little askew by the wind and placed them neatly on the table.
He was not wrong about his student. From the perspective of pursuing theory, the dean did nothing wrong - the experiment was an unprecedented success.
The news that the man from a thousand years ago had woken up was enough to cause a huge sensation in the outside world.
But as if it had come true, he remembered the rule he had formulated for the experiment: the only rule was for the observer, respect time, and avoid paradox.
Amidst the wildly fluctuating data, they can only extract the applicable points for the theories they firmly believe in. However, this does not mean that the remaining data is chaotic; on the contrary, the data may point to another opposite answer.
They could deny the existence of time machines and parallel universes, but they would then step into an abyss of uncertainty. In that abyss, within reach, with their current technology, they could not verify a counterexample to Bell's inequality.
At the speed of light, there is no passage of time.
But in the real world where the speed is lower than that of light, whether it is people thousands of years ago or people thousands of years later, whether it is them or instruments that have stopped working, they are experiencing the passage of time every moment, flowing from a low entropy state to a high entropy state.
Or to be more realistic, Dean Fang has no time left, and neither do they.
Every researcher who participated in the experiment signed his or her name on the confidentiality agreement and obeyed the mandatory arrangement to be dispersed in research institutes across the country.
This experiment will not be allowed to be disclosed publicly, recorded, or even talked about by them.
Fang Luochun watched Wu Chuannan sort through piles of data before answering his question. "I'll leave a day earlier than the teacher. I'll leave tonight."
She laughed a few times, as if she remembered something extremely funny - not as if, because those things had happened a long time ago. She could no longer remember the most distant ones, but the most recent ones were not far away from now.
She heard her former teacher leave behind a warning—a warning they all knew no one would obey: "There's still a long time to go on. Don't go on."
They have been working for decades for the theories they pursue, starting from the vaguely formed goal in their student days, to their current positions and obtaining the most favorable conditions for themselves.
Looking back at the road they have traveled, one can use fanaticism and paranoia to explain everything they did, but that cannot cover up the fact that the road was too long.
She understood better than anyone what these data meant. In fact, she could fully accept the almost certain paradoxical outcome pointed to by the remaining data.
But from the outset, Wu Chuannan's experiment was doomed to fail. Perhaps it was because of the human rights they constantly emphasized, perhaps because of their skepticism about pseudo-randomness, or perhaps because they didn't need cutting-edge results or a science that would overturn their own.
In short, he had lost his authority over this experiment. Fang Luochun didn't visit Wu Chuannan again, nor did he respond to that seemingly heartfelt request.
Tonight, it seemed, wasn't too far away. She looked up at the clock on the wall, calculating her remaining time. She had been the dean for a long time, four or five years, maybe even longer.
Fang Luochun knew that he remembered it very clearly, and he knew from the beginning that it was something he could not give up.
She recited the preface softly, "It enables people to gain wisdom that is not instinctive of living things, and to gain a soul that is not innate."
The night deepened, illuminating the last person to leave the research center. The streetlights cast her shadow here, and only she knew that she would inevitably repeat the same mistakes: paradox, failure, and disregard for their wishes.
If there is no fanaticism and paranoia, how can human science be called science?
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