Chapter 21 Bubbles (5) His heat cycle came early, his pheromones...
Thursday, 6:30 PM, Reef Art Museum, Appreciation Class.
It was supposed to be the last session in the afternoon, but because the art museum closes for cleaning in the afternoon to accommodate its opening hours, it was moved to the evening.
Because it took up their free time, and the director will be going on a business trip next week, tonight's class time will be used as next week's class time, and next Thursday will be a rest day.
During roll call, Xie Tan arrived at the art gallery to find that two-thirds of the students had already arrived.
Some enthusiastic classmates greeted him, and Xie Tan responded simply.
Not everyone had arrived yet, and the director hadn't arrived either. Some groups were on their own, continuing to discuss their work.
Xie Tan didn't see his partner, so he pretended to stroll around and walked deeper into the exhibition hall.
"Bubble" is still hanging there, and Xie Tan is considering whether there are conditions for creating a clone.
Does everyone who sees this painting create a clone, or does a clone only appear when certain conditions are met?
He had seen the painting, but he didn't encounter another version of himself.
Xie Tan returned the way he came and ran into the classmate who had greeted him. The classmate was with his group partner.
But this time, the other person looked at him with a hint of surprise: "Hello, are you here to visit the museum? I thought you were just a student from our university."
It was as if they didn't know him.
Before Xie Tan could react, the classmate's partner looked over in surprise: "What are you talking about? Isn't this a new classmate? You just greeted him?"
"What? I don't remember that."
A noisy conversation drifted from afar, and Xie Tan had a bad feeling.
He turned the corner of the corridor and found that there were three times more people in the hall than before. Chang Mingai had also arrived, and there were several students of each appearance. Everyone was surprised and suspicious, questioning each other.
Xie Tan turned around, and in the corridor he had come from, all the works had been transformed into "Bubble," like a virus that had been replicated along the way.
He was wrong; the protagonist of this episode was not Chang Mingai.
It wasn't just one person, but a group of people—everyone in the first-year art history class.
It's not a doppelganger, but countless bubbles, countless selves.
The class monitor received a message from Director Wu, who said that something came up and he had to go on a business trip earlier than planned and couldn't come. He told everyone to take a look at the works and then go back.
The class monitor immediately called the director, but there was no signal and he couldn't get through.
No one had cell phone signal and couldn't contact the outside world.
Excessive fear leads to aggression. In a certain part of the crowd, a fight suddenly breaks out. A classmate beats up another version of himself, wanting to find out what happened.
A conflict broke out in one place, and it quickly spread to other places. One of them, Chang Ming'ai, spotted him at a glance, grabbed him, and ran away.
"This isn't right, let's go... Hey!"
Another classmate suddenly appeared, snatched Xie Tan away, and ran in another direction, not forgetting to smear her: "Who knows if she's real or not? Don't believe her, let's run!"
Then other classmates snatched it away, and Xie Tan passed it through many hands until he could no longer tolerate it.
After being snatched away by another Chang Mingai, he took the initiative and dragged his partner, whose identity was unknown, back to the hall.
The number of people in the hall doubled, and all the works in the museum were transformed into "Bubble".
The pitch-black painting surrounded them, and countless dazzling bubbles made them dizzy, as if they had detached from the canvas and floated among them. The water vapor diffused, and the figures hidden behind the bubbles watched them silently and mockingly.
They finally remembered there was a door, but it was locked, and they had to force their way out.
The painting "Bubble" at the very front of the hall made a sound.
The sound was like something sinking in water, with each word ending in a "pop" sound. It was disjointed and sounded very strange, like many people talking, or like just waves churning. They couldn't understand it at all.
Just then, the cleaner appeared with a cart, looking at them like lambs to the slaughter: "Welcome, little artists. Truth and falsehood, life and death are the eternal topics of your art. How boring is it to just analyze other people's works? Today we are here to perfect a half-finished product, which will be your work, this 'Bubble'."
Everyone looked in horror at the painting that was speaking and the fierce man who had suddenly appeared. He was tall and had two obvious scars on his rough face, one new and one old, perfectly symmetrical, as if he had cut himself to achieve symmetry.
“You can also think of this as a game, where only one of you is real, and the others are just bubbles.”
"The deadline for completing the work is 9 o'clock. If the main body leaves the art museum before 9 o'clock, the other bubbles that the main body split off will immediately burst. After 9 o'clock, if there is a main body still alive in the museum, the bubbles will also burst. But if the main body dies, no matter how many 'you' are left, they are all real 'you'."
Everyone stopped banging on the door. A few people continued banging on the door, but they were also stunned by the eerie scene and hesitated to stop.
There were one or two others who were still banging on the door, unaware of what was going on, but they were stopped by classmates who looked different from them.
The one that's still crashing now is most likely the main body, the target of everyone's anger!
Countless similar people secretly observe each other's behavior, creating an undercurrent of tension.
Everyone wants to survive and become real.
But this isn't just a game about finding the original entity and killing it.
Based on the current rate of population growth, Xie Tan guessed that every time the main body sees a painting, a new bubble clone will be created.
Now, this painting is everywhere in the museum, and the number of visitors keeps increasing. The art museum is only so big, and sooner or later it will be full, and then it will be time to throw people out.
The doors don't even need to be locked; neither side will allow the other to leave the game area.
The problem is, there is only one Xie Tan.
He had seen the painting not many times, but long enough that he should have had bubble clones, but he never encountered another version of himself, and it seemed that no one else had seen another version of him either.
Even if they don't have many clones, and they can't meet in the vast sea of people once they leave the art museum, the art museum at this moment is obviously deliberately setting up a trap to bring them all together here.
If there isn't another "him" yet, then there truly isn't one.
Surely they didn't intentionally exclude him, did they? The fierce cleaner's gaze was quite cold; it was a look of displeasure.
Cleaner: "But before we begin, we need to clean up the people who are destroying the creation of the artwork. You can't participate in the game if you do that."
Everyone in the hall looked at Xie Tan.
He's so obvious, he's truly unique.
Ignoring all gazes, Xie Tan calmly said, "Then just let me go, right?"
The cleaner hadn't expected his reaction. He chuckled as if he'd heard a huge joke. Just as he was about to say something, everyone who had been looking at Xie Tan turned to look at him, seemingly agreeing with Xie Tan's statement. The bubble painting also made a strange gurgling sound.
The oppressive feeling suddenly shifted back to him.
The cleaner frowned. What's going on? Could this kid have brought some kind of magical artifact or spell?
But this kid has already ruined the game's even-number aesthetics, so we can't ruin the game's timeline any further.
It's not a big deal. There are always some strange people in Diqiu, but how many of them actually survive?
Xie Tan left amidst the farewells of the crowd. Stepping out of the art museum's main gate, he found himself on the second-floor open-air balcony at the back entrance of the art museum. A cleaner pushed him, and he fell right into the tall iron tree seat, the very artwork he and Chang Ming had chosen.
"I've sealed off the art gallery. Before nine o'clock, no one is allowed in or out except for the kids who are playing games. Since you're not playing, just stay put and don't ruin the creation of good works. Be careful not to fall down, these are all iron spikes, sizzle—you'll be skewered into a human meat skewer."
The cleaner looked at him with a bloodthirsty curiosity: "What kind of magical artifact did you use? Where did you get it? It's something special."
He secretly shone a mirror on Xie Tan and didn't detect any special power. Could it be that it's hiding something?
"You can't possibly have no desires at all, can you? There's no such person in the world," the cleaner said with a smile and a shake of his head. "I usually just kill annoying people like you who ruin other people's fun, but I'm really curious, so I'll let you live a little longer. When the work is completed, your corpse will be the best celebration for the work. Wait for me to come back, kid."
The chair was hard and uneven, so Xie Tan leaned against one side and ignored him.
The cleaner didn't care; in his eyes, the man was already dead. He didn't go back into the museum but drove away.
Xie Tan thought the cleaner would probably come back after the dust settled at nine o'clock.
He pretended to adjust his position and touched the balcony, and the iron spikes immediately wrapped around his wrist.
Then there's no way to escape.
Number 7 took a step and wrapped her little paw around Xie Tan's knee twice to see where it was tied the tightest. After confirming it was her left hand, she squeezed her fluffy cat tail inside to cushion Xie Tan and make him more comfortable.
Xie Tan stroked the cat's fur with his movable fingers, pondering the cleaner's words.
So, is "desire" a condition for division?
A desire arises from the original self, and thus a gap is created, allowing the painting to slip in and blow bubbles with desire.
The rapid and numerous reproductions are not because people have too many desires that are all brought into reality, but rather because as long as there is a single desire, as long as the desire remains, the painting can leverage consciousness and continuously reproduce itself.
Xie Tan was indeed indifferent to almost everything, but after experiencing the transmigration into a comic book, he dared not say that he hadn't deviated from his self-perceived desires in the slightest.
Otherwise, why would he have come here?
Xie Tan looked at Number 7, and the cat tilted its head, confused: "Is there anywhere else that hurts when I poke it? But I'm only this big, damn it, meow... No? That's worry, meow, are you thinking about that cleaner, meow?"
Xie Tan tacitly agreed. Cat and he had already reached a tacit understanding. Having received a positive answer, Cat also analyzed the situation, but in a very simple and blunt way: "His plan just had a bug, right? What an idiot, meow. Besides, we don't need him. I will fulfill your wish, meow!"
For some reason, Xie Tan chuckled and didn't continue the topic.
Through the glass window, he saw that the art gallery was getting more and more crowded, with people piled up like fleshy toys.
The windows and doors were all open, and occasionally people were thrown out. The dead were torn apart, while the living desperately tried to squeeze back in, like a zombie horde trapped inside the building.
But not many people threw it out; nobody wanted to accidentally throw their own body out.
Time has passed, and the original body has still not appeared. It's unclear whether this is a blessing or a curse, but it won't end well if things continue like this.
But Xie Tan couldn't care less about that anymore.
His body temperature is rising.
His pale skin flushed slightly. He instinctively tried to pull down his hood, but his hands were bound, so he could only lower his head and cover his face.
He felt a chill, broke out in a cold sweat, became agitated, and his consciousness began to drift.
It felt like a fire was burning inside my body, while outside I was still bothered by the evening breeze, feeling hot and cold all at once, which was extremely painful.
His neck was burning terribly. He smelled a familiar scent, more somber than the night, more chilling than screams and the sounds of gunfire, more bloody than the wind blowing through the art gallery.
It was eerie, like burning damp incense sticks.
There is an eerie holiness, fading into the distance.
His estrus cycle started early, and his pheromones became uncontrollable.
He had just said he had almost no desires, but now, a primal, animalistic desire was burning within him.
His increasingly sensitive body could clearly feel the intricate and uneven path of the iron branches, and he dared not move at all, his skin tingling.
Xie Tan struggled to reach the inhibitor in his pocket, pointed the syringe at his arm, and asked Number 7 to point out the location of the vein.
His emotions were amplified and extremely unstable. In his endless longing, endless disgust surged into his heart, and he hated this moment the most.
The surging pheromones continued to spread, drifting unimpeded into the wide-open doors and windows.
The crowd, which had been swarming and churning like insects, fell into an eerie silence, all turning their heads toward the back door.
This sparked an even more frenzied surge.
A note from the author:
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Tomorrow I'll be a paid chapter, and there will be a 10,000-word update! [cat emoji]
I'm writing another pre-order to complete the second part of the Cthulhu Family series. Next time, I should choose one of the two to publish.
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