买提科幻 Break Free 第三集：蝗虫的酒吧# Joke - 肚皮舞运动
H*y
1 楼
第一集: Incantation
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Joke/33669549.html
第二集: Infiltrate
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Joke/33673263.html
Break Free 3: Locust’s Bar
By Highly & ne5234
Chapter One: Zuan’s Love
“What can I do for you, Miss?” The woman’s voice was not inviting. She
was a tall blond, wearing a sequined dress exposing her broad shoulders.
Face obscured in the dim porch light.
“I’m looking for … Locust.” Yuhua immediately felt stupid after saying
the name. Expecting the woman to laugh at her, she was ready to walk away at
any moment, but the door opened wider. The woman led Yuhua through a dark
passage and stopped at the entrance to the bar. “Locust!” she called out
impatiently before plunging into a group of men who were heavy with beer and
cigar.
It looked like a regular bar, but Yuhua suddenly tensed up. Up to now, she
still couldn’t be sure if the whole thing about MITBBS indeed happened. She
had physically recovered two days after she came out of the coma. The first
thing she did was to log into her account, Yuhua27.
“Username does not exist.”
Fine! She must have dreamed up a long story while she was lying in bed. Half
relieved and half disappointed, she created a new ID, and was surprised to
find a message awaiting her. Probably some welcome message, she thought as
she clicked on it.
“Madaya. Best place for beers.”
She stared at the message and frowned. Was it a commercial? With a quick
search online, she found that Madaya was a bar located in Houston. But then,
the plural form of “beers” brought back some memory. She once wrote the
same word in a title and got laughed at by several old IDs for bad grammar.
The message came from “Locust”, but when she searched the sender, the ID
did not exist. Needless to say that the message vanished by itself after a
few minutes.
She tried to forget about it in the next few days but in vain. And since she
had already planned to travel to Austin, which was only a couple of hours
away from Houston, she decided to check it out.
“Oh, finally!” Locust exhaled as she gestured Yuhua to sit down with her
in a small office. “Someone cared to show up.”
The woman was probably in her early forties, with blond hair and brown eyes,
but otherwise an Asian face. Yuhua’s first reaction was that the woman did
not belong here. She had a sharp and intelligent look that better matched a
corporation executive. On the wall behind her hang a dozen personalized
license plates, which were common for bar decorations. In the eyes of an
American, they were random words: BACKHOME, LOVE, USANEWS, FACULTY, STOCK,
MILITARY …, but Yuhua could not have been more familiar with the names.
“You are the thirteenth I’ve managed to bring home, yet all of your
precursors chose to ignore my message.” Locust followed Yuhua’s gaze and
glanced at the plates. “Somebody once told me those names contain a secret.”
“You … brought me back?” Yuhua’s heart contracted. She had indeed lived
in another world for seven years. Kept as a slave.
Locust’s eyes were filled with sympathy. Her hand reached out and patted on
Yuhua’s shoulders. “Poor girl, I know you must have suffered enough.
Seven years was a long time.” Then her expression became stern. “But I
have to warn you. This world may not be any safer.”
Yuhua didn’t pay attention to the warning. She was too bothered by a
question. “How did this happen? My body was staying in bed all the time …
” When asking the question, she recalled the meeting with their boss, Mr.
Xing. He had told her that they lived in parallel universes connected
through computer programs, but now she wasn’t sure if he was lying.
“In fact, I don’t fully understand the science part,” said Locust, “even
though I know the operation. I was once given the privilege because,
because …” She hesitated.
“Because I trusted you.” A male’s voice came from the door.
Yuhua didn’t need to look at the visitor to tell it was Zuan. He had
followed her here to get her. Now that she had learned about his secret, he
no longer needed to pretend innocent. Her heart pounded quickly as she tried
to decide what to do. Should she stay with Locust, or try to break loose as
soon as possible? Did Zuan have partners outside?
To her surprise, Zuan showed no interest in her. “Yuhua, could you step out
and let me have a minute with Ms. Locust?”
“I see no reason for her to leave.” Locust grabbed Yuhua’s arm. She
seemed to be more nervous than Yuhua. “What do you want?”
Zuan didn’t answer her question. He looked around the house and shook his
head. “So, this is the life you had wanted? An owner of a bar, with filthy
men and slutty women, smoke and slang, day and night. How is this better
than what I had created for you?”
“This is real.”
“What is NOT REAL?” Zuan suddenly lost his temper. For a while, Yuhua
thought he were going to hit one of them, but eventually he calmed down.
“I can’t believe you still don’t grasp the reality, Locust. I need
your help. We’re running out of time.”
Locust sneered. “We would have all the time till eternity, if your Mr. Boss
could just leave us alone.” She bit her teeth when mentioning Xing. “What
a hopelessly greedy …”
“Mr. Xing is the noblest person in the world,” Zuan said with dignity.
“One who imprisons young people’s souls, so that they can write
meaningless articles and generate fake traffic for his website?”
“Imprison …” Zuan shook his head. “You think you are free? One day you’
ll understand the whole thing. We all own him.”
Now, for the first time since he entered the room, he looked at Yuhua
directly. “You need to take more rest, girl. I’ve told you.” He turned
around and headed outside. Then he paused at the door and said in a soft
voice, “One day you’ll know what you have missed.”
Yuhua knew the last sentence was not addressed to her.
Chapter Two: The Fire
That night, Yuhua had a restless stay in the hotel. She was constantly
checking the outside through the window and the door viewer. Zuan had
followed her all the way here to track down Locust. He might have got all he
needed, or he might still be watching her. Meanwhile, Yuhua wasn’t sure
how to think of him. She had been with him almost on a daily basis for seven
years. She had known him as a snobby and squeamish person, albeit his
unshakeable royalty to Xing. After the encounter tonight, though, she
suspected that her experience in the other world was only tip of the iceberg.
She took out a notebook and wrote down the six forum names: BACKHOME, LOVE,
USANEWS, FACULTY, STOCK, MILITARY. There were ten or twelve in total, but
she couldn’t remember the rest exactly. Locust said the names contained a
secret. What could that be? She stayed awake in bed for a long time. She was
afraid that the darkness would bring her back to the other world, where
Xing was king of a bunch of young souls, “robots” who were paid with fake
money … the noblest person in the world, Zuan had said … “Zan,” the
woman with a ghostly face …
She sprang up on the bed and gasped for air. The hotel room was emerged in
sunlight, although it seemed she hadn’t slept at all. She turned on the TV
to wash away the dreams, but was immediately caught by a piece of news.
“… The fire was put off around 11 pm. The technician is still in hospital,
but her condition isn’t serious. According to her, the fire started from
the east side of the building, but when she tried to escape in the opposite
direction, she saw another fire source coming from ahead.”
“We back up our data automatically at the end of every day,” said an Asian
guy with a chubby face and bright eyes. “There is little damage on the
experimental results, but several major pieces of equipment were totaled.”
Yuhua read the description on the screen: Larry Tang, Associate Professor of
Neuroscience, UT Austin. Could he be the ID she was looking for,
ProfessorFish?
“The Austin Research Center received three billions from the president a
year ago,” said a woman’s voice from outside the picture. “I guess
replacing the equipment is not a problem for you, Professor Tang?”
Tang smiled bitterly. “It is, unfortunately.”
“Could you tell us a little bit about your research?”
“We use psychophysical and physiological approaches to study topics related
to human’s free will. Well, that’s a general description of my research
areas. With regard to what we do here at the center, I have to say that we
don’t have a clear idea about what we are dealing with yet.”
Chapter 3: The Secret
Turning off the TV, Yuhua logged into MITBBS and sent ProfessorFish a
message. He must have been busy with the fire incident and did not get back
to her until three days later. Yes, he was Prof. Tang, and he also
remembered Yuhua27 as a special “robot”.
“A robot with a heart,” he said when they sat down in his office. Since
the lab at the research center was temporarily closed, Tang was back
fulltime to his old lab at UT Austin. “I remembered you well. And I was
once curious why you had disappeared three weeks ago.”
Yuhua briefly described her past seven years as a robot, how she had escaped
, and the recent experience at Locust’s bar. Tang listened carefully.
“Thank you for telling me this, Yuhua. What you said, especially the
conversation with Xing and the woman you met in the end, is extremely
important for our research.”
“For your research?”
“The project was initiated by the president. According to information
gathered by the FBI, there’s a conspiracy going on with MITBBS. It has been
known for a long time that the owner, Xing, regularly hires what we call
robots to write forum posts. The FBI believes it’s more than that. They
have evidence that Xing’s power has extended beyond the forum and
infiltrated the U.S. government.”
“Then why can’t they just shut the website?”
“Well, if someone has that technology, it’s better to figure it out how
they made it. That was the motivation of the study. However, as our research
moved along, we sensed that the truth might be even more spooky.” Tang
looked at the space next to where Yuhua sat. There was fear in his eyes.
“You mentioned in the news that you specialize in neuroscience related to
free will. How does this project connect to your research?”
It took him a while to collect himself and respond to her question. He
picked up a mug from the desk and showed it to her. “When you look at this
cup, Yuhua, what do you see inside?”
The cup was empty, but Yuhua knew better than to say that. “Air molecules.”
“What else?”
When Yuhua was a robot, she had browsed a wide range of topics including
physics. “Dark energy, and some particles, maybe.”
“Not bad.” Tang nodded as if he were teaching a student. “For the entire
human history, we’ve been focusing on things that exist, things that could
be measured. Laozi was the first who brought up the idea of nothingness. To
him, that’s equally important as things that exist.”
Yuhua was bewildered. She could not foresee how that related to MITBBS.
“Yuhua, you should know that better than anyone else that a social media
has to operate on some kind of network. Some call it virtual; some call it
physical. Either way, the network EXISTS. We, human, and furthermore, the
universe and even the multiverse, do not operate independently. How do we
interact with one another?”
“Through the four fundamental forces, like gravity?”
“Yes, but I suspect that’s just an expression. Something more fundamental
might be underlying them, at the level of the Planck length. Why would the
seemingly empty vacuum carry weak charge? You could think of it as the
smallest digital unit of a computing device. If you have a way of accessing
the information …”
Someone was knocking on the door. “That must be my student. Well, let’s
stay in touch, Yuhua. If you need to contact me, write to this email address
.” Tang wrote on the back of a business card and handed it to her.
Yuhua took over the card and stood up. There was one question she had to ask
, “How do you think of Xing?”
Tang shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s either a terribly bad guy or a
saint. No matter what, I have a feeling that he’s ahead of us.”
When Yuhua left the campus, the sky was getting dark. She took a cab to a
large Chinese restaurant, which was located in a business center opposite to
a Stock Exchange. After she stepped out of the cab, she peeked at the
display board outside the Stock Exchange.
“MITBBS, Price: 23.00.”
She stopped dead on the sidewalk. The whole world had faded away from her
mind. BACKHOME, LOVE, USANEWS, FACULTY, STOCK … She mentally went through
the list again and again. Was this just a coincidence, or had she actually
run into the secret? What’s next? Her brain was blank. She took out the
list from her bag and checked the last item: MILITARY.
Well, she’d find out the answer soon.
(To be continued …)
====
Link to Break Free 1: Incantation
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Joke/33669549.html
Link to Break Free 2: Infiltrate
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Joke/33673263.html
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Joke/33669549.html
第二集: Infiltrate
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Joke/33673263.html
Break Free 3: Locust’s Bar
By Highly & ne5234
Chapter One: Zuan’s Love
“What can I do for you, Miss?” The woman’s voice was not inviting. She
was a tall blond, wearing a sequined dress exposing her broad shoulders.
Face obscured in the dim porch light.
“I’m looking for … Locust.” Yuhua immediately felt stupid after saying
the name. Expecting the woman to laugh at her, she was ready to walk away at
any moment, but the door opened wider. The woman led Yuhua through a dark
passage and stopped at the entrance to the bar. “Locust!” she called out
impatiently before plunging into a group of men who were heavy with beer and
cigar.
It looked like a regular bar, but Yuhua suddenly tensed up. Up to now, she
still couldn’t be sure if the whole thing about MITBBS indeed happened. She
had physically recovered two days after she came out of the coma. The first
thing she did was to log into her account, Yuhua27.
“Username does not exist.”
Fine! She must have dreamed up a long story while she was lying in bed. Half
relieved and half disappointed, she created a new ID, and was surprised to
find a message awaiting her. Probably some welcome message, she thought as
she clicked on it.
“Madaya. Best place for beers.”
She stared at the message and frowned. Was it a commercial? With a quick
search online, she found that Madaya was a bar located in Houston. But then,
the plural form of “beers” brought back some memory. She once wrote the
same word in a title and got laughed at by several old IDs for bad grammar.
The message came from “Locust”, but when she searched the sender, the ID
did not exist. Needless to say that the message vanished by itself after a
few minutes.
She tried to forget about it in the next few days but in vain. And since she
had already planned to travel to Austin, which was only a couple of hours
away from Houston, she decided to check it out.
“Oh, finally!” Locust exhaled as she gestured Yuhua to sit down with her
in a small office. “Someone cared to show up.”
The woman was probably in her early forties, with blond hair and brown eyes,
but otherwise an Asian face. Yuhua’s first reaction was that the woman did
not belong here. She had a sharp and intelligent look that better matched a
corporation executive. On the wall behind her hang a dozen personalized
license plates, which were common for bar decorations. In the eyes of an
American, they were random words: BACKHOME, LOVE, USANEWS, FACULTY, STOCK,
MILITARY …, but Yuhua could not have been more familiar with the names.
“You are the thirteenth I’ve managed to bring home, yet all of your
precursors chose to ignore my message.” Locust followed Yuhua’s gaze and
glanced at the plates. “Somebody once told me those names contain a secret.”
“You … brought me back?” Yuhua’s heart contracted. She had indeed lived
in another world for seven years. Kept as a slave.
Locust’s eyes were filled with sympathy. Her hand reached out and patted on
Yuhua’s shoulders. “Poor girl, I know you must have suffered enough.
Seven years was a long time.” Then her expression became stern. “But I
have to warn you. This world may not be any safer.”
Yuhua didn’t pay attention to the warning. She was too bothered by a
question. “How did this happen? My body was staying in bed all the time …
” When asking the question, she recalled the meeting with their boss, Mr.
Xing. He had told her that they lived in parallel universes connected
through computer programs, but now she wasn’t sure if he was lying.
“In fact, I don’t fully understand the science part,” said Locust, “even
though I know the operation. I was once given the privilege because,
because …” She hesitated.
“Because I trusted you.” A male’s voice came from the door.
Yuhua didn’t need to look at the visitor to tell it was Zuan. He had
followed her here to get her. Now that she had learned about his secret, he
no longer needed to pretend innocent. Her heart pounded quickly as she tried
to decide what to do. Should she stay with Locust, or try to break loose as
soon as possible? Did Zuan have partners outside?
To her surprise, Zuan showed no interest in her. “Yuhua, could you step out
and let me have a minute with Ms. Locust?”
“I see no reason for her to leave.” Locust grabbed Yuhua’s arm. She
seemed to be more nervous than Yuhua. “What do you want?”
Zuan didn’t answer her question. He looked around the house and shook his
head. “So, this is the life you had wanted? An owner of a bar, with filthy
men and slutty women, smoke and slang, day and night. How is this better
than what I had created for you?”
“This is real.”
“What is NOT REAL?” Zuan suddenly lost his temper. For a while, Yuhua
thought he were going to hit one of them, but eventually he calmed down.
“I can’t believe you still don’t grasp the reality, Locust. I need
your help. We’re running out of time.”
Locust sneered. “We would have all the time till eternity, if your Mr. Boss
could just leave us alone.” She bit her teeth when mentioning Xing. “What
a hopelessly greedy …”
“Mr. Xing is the noblest person in the world,” Zuan said with dignity.
“One who imprisons young people’s souls, so that they can write
meaningless articles and generate fake traffic for his website?”
“Imprison …” Zuan shook his head. “You think you are free? One day you’
ll understand the whole thing. We all own him.”
Now, for the first time since he entered the room, he looked at Yuhua
directly. “You need to take more rest, girl. I’ve told you.” He turned
around and headed outside. Then he paused at the door and said in a soft
voice, “One day you’ll know what you have missed.”
Yuhua knew the last sentence was not addressed to her.
Chapter Two: The Fire
That night, Yuhua had a restless stay in the hotel. She was constantly
checking the outside through the window and the door viewer. Zuan had
followed her all the way here to track down Locust. He might have got all he
needed, or he might still be watching her. Meanwhile, Yuhua wasn’t sure
how to think of him. She had been with him almost on a daily basis for seven
years. She had known him as a snobby and squeamish person, albeit his
unshakeable royalty to Xing. After the encounter tonight, though, she
suspected that her experience in the other world was only tip of the iceberg.
She took out a notebook and wrote down the six forum names: BACKHOME, LOVE,
USANEWS, FACULTY, STOCK, MILITARY. There were ten or twelve in total, but
she couldn’t remember the rest exactly. Locust said the names contained a
secret. What could that be? She stayed awake in bed for a long time. She was
afraid that the darkness would bring her back to the other world, where
Xing was king of a bunch of young souls, “robots” who were paid with fake
money … the noblest person in the world, Zuan had said … “Zan,” the
woman with a ghostly face …
She sprang up on the bed and gasped for air. The hotel room was emerged in
sunlight, although it seemed she hadn’t slept at all. She turned on the TV
to wash away the dreams, but was immediately caught by a piece of news.
“… The fire was put off around 11 pm. The technician is still in hospital,
but her condition isn’t serious. According to her, the fire started from
the east side of the building, but when she tried to escape in the opposite
direction, she saw another fire source coming from ahead.”
“We back up our data automatically at the end of every day,” said an Asian
guy with a chubby face and bright eyes. “There is little damage on the
experimental results, but several major pieces of equipment were totaled.”
Yuhua read the description on the screen: Larry Tang, Associate Professor of
Neuroscience, UT Austin. Could he be the ID she was looking for,
ProfessorFish?
“The Austin Research Center received three billions from the president a
year ago,” said a woman’s voice from outside the picture. “I guess
replacing the equipment is not a problem for you, Professor Tang?”
Tang smiled bitterly. “It is, unfortunately.”
“Could you tell us a little bit about your research?”
“We use psychophysical and physiological approaches to study topics related
to human’s free will. Well, that’s a general description of my research
areas. With regard to what we do here at the center, I have to say that we
don’t have a clear idea about what we are dealing with yet.”
Chapter 3: The Secret
Turning off the TV, Yuhua logged into MITBBS and sent ProfessorFish a
message. He must have been busy with the fire incident and did not get back
to her until three days later. Yes, he was Prof. Tang, and he also
remembered Yuhua27 as a special “robot”.
“A robot with a heart,” he said when they sat down in his office. Since
the lab at the research center was temporarily closed, Tang was back
fulltime to his old lab at UT Austin. “I remembered you well. And I was
once curious why you had disappeared three weeks ago.”
Yuhua briefly described her past seven years as a robot, how she had escaped
, and the recent experience at Locust’s bar. Tang listened carefully.
“Thank you for telling me this, Yuhua. What you said, especially the
conversation with Xing and the woman you met in the end, is extremely
important for our research.”
“For your research?”
“The project was initiated by the president. According to information
gathered by the FBI, there’s a conspiracy going on with MITBBS. It has been
known for a long time that the owner, Xing, regularly hires what we call
robots to write forum posts. The FBI believes it’s more than that. They
have evidence that Xing’s power has extended beyond the forum and
infiltrated the U.S. government.”
“Then why can’t they just shut the website?”
“Well, if someone has that technology, it’s better to figure it out how
they made it. That was the motivation of the study. However, as our research
moved along, we sensed that the truth might be even more spooky.” Tang
looked at the space next to where Yuhua sat. There was fear in his eyes.
“You mentioned in the news that you specialize in neuroscience related to
free will. How does this project connect to your research?”
It took him a while to collect himself and respond to her question. He
picked up a mug from the desk and showed it to her. “When you look at this
cup, Yuhua, what do you see inside?”
The cup was empty, but Yuhua knew better than to say that. “Air molecules.”
“What else?”
When Yuhua was a robot, she had browsed a wide range of topics including
physics. “Dark energy, and some particles, maybe.”
“Not bad.” Tang nodded as if he were teaching a student. “For the entire
human history, we’ve been focusing on things that exist, things that could
be measured. Laozi was the first who brought up the idea of nothingness. To
him, that’s equally important as things that exist.”
Yuhua was bewildered. She could not foresee how that related to MITBBS.
“Yuhua, you should know that better than anyone else that a social media
has to operate on some kind of network. Some call it virtual; some call it
physical. Either way, the network EXISTS. We, human, and furthermore, the
universe and even the multiverse, do not operate independently. How do we
interact with one another?”
“Through the four fundamental forces, like gravity?”
“Yes, but I suspect that’s just an expression. Something more fundamental
might be underlying them, at the level of the Planck length. Why would the
seemingly empty vacuum carry weak charge? You could think of it as the
smallest digital unit of a computing device. If you have a way of accessing
the information …”
Someone was knocking on the door. “That must be my student. Well, let’s
stay in touch, Yuhua. If you need to contact me, write to this email address
.” Tang wrote on the back of a business card and handed it to her.
Yuhua took over the card and stood up. There was one question she had to ask
, “How do you think of Xing?”
Tang shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s either a terribly bad guy or a
saint. No matter what, I have a feeling that he’s ahead of us.”
When Yuhua left the campus, the sky was getting dark. She took a cab to a
large Chinese restaurant, which was located in a business center opposite to
a Stock Exchange. After she stepped out of the cab, she peeked at the
display board outside the Stock Exchange.
“MITBBS, Price: 23.00.”
She stopped dead on the sidewalk. The whole world had faded away from her
mind. BACKHOME, LOVE, USANEWS, FACULTY, STOCK … She mentally went through
the list again and again. Was this just a coincidence, or had she actually
run into the secret? What’s next? Her brain was blank. She took out the
list from her bag and checked the last item: MILITARY.
Well, she’d find out the answer soon.
(To be continued …)
====
Link to Break Free 1: Incantation
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Joke/33669549.html
Link to Break Free 2: Infiltrate
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Joke/33673263.html
