Survivorship Bias

Chapter 110: false memory

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Lucy is a person who hangs out in adult clubs all the year round, so it's not surprising that these two people are a good match everywhere, so it makes sense.

"I just said, I thought you two were a couple when you first came here."

The elevator door opened, and Lucy went out first, leading the two of them all the way to the innermost door.

She poked the doorbell with her long nails, and saw the door automatically opened from the inside. She felt that her mission had been accomplished, and left voluntarily.

Before leaving, Lucy even winked at the two, wishing them "have a good evening".

It wasn't an ambiguous remark, but when it came to what Shen Ti said before, An Wujiu also felt ambiguous.

Shen Ti was heartless, smiled at Lucy, then took An Wujiu's arm and led him into the room together.

"Good evening, Gabriel," Shen Ti unceremoniously pulled a chair and sat down as soon as he entered, "You seem to be very leisurely today, have you finished?"

Gabriel was sitting on the sofa in a bathrobe, with a half of an electronic cigarette in his hand, and his pink afro looked extra fluffy tonight.

Of course he could hear the ridicule in Shen Ti's tone, "Yes, aren't you all very leisurely?"

An Wujiu didn't sit down, and didn't want to talk too much, so he cut to the chase and said, "Maguire is dead."

He raised his hand and showed Gabriel the game panel of the altar, which displayed the player page of the same field, in which Maguire's head portrait was already gray, and there was a red cross on it, attached to [Player has been eliminated] brief.

Gabriel stood up from the sofa all of a sudden, strode to An Wujiu, and carefully confirmed the news of Maguire's death.

"It's really dead..." He looked excited, raised his head, and met An Wujiu's eyes.

From his eyes, An Wujiu read the complicated emotions of long-term hatred and final peace.

"You hate him so much?" An Wujiu asked him.

The joy on Gabriel's face quickly disappeared, and it became a little gloomy again.

"If it were you, you would hate him too." He put his hands on the low table next to Shen Ti's chair, and threw the electronic cigarette on it, "I'm just such a little sister, and that bastard Maguire can put her He was paralyzed and lost all feeling in his lower body, and he is still in a private hospital, waiting for the latest artificial spine to be transplanted in the second half of the year."

While talking, Gabriel couldn't help sighing, "If I knew that this bastard dared to do something, I would have crippled his legs when they first got together. He still carried his life on his back and escaped in an accident, and now he is the victim His family is still looking for him."

Gabriel sneered, "Just die like this, it's cheaper for him!"

Originally, An Wujiu didn't feel much in his heart, but now, hearing Gabriel say this, he couldn't help but feel sympathy for the man in front of him.

"Let's not talk about that, the first time I saw you two, I knew you were capable of fighting him to death."

"Not really." An Wujiu whispered, "He just died at the hands of his allies."

"That's also because he himself is too stupid and too arrogant."

Gabriel's room has a floor-to-ceiling window on the south side, An Wujiu didn't notice it last time, but this time he noticed it when he saw the fire outside.

From the floor-to-ceiling windows, you can see an open space in the residential area, like an abandoned stadium. Someone lit a fire in the open space, the light of the fire reflected the ground, An Wujiu found that there were many red marks on the ground, like symbols painted with paint.

The people in the firelight bowed their heads for a while, stood up and danced for a while, very much like a primitive tribal sacrifice.

With the towering holographic projection not far away, the gap between eras seems to have merged into this land.

"What is this doing?" Shen Ti also saw it.

"Recently there are some people who believe in cults." Gabriel seemed to be familiar with it. "It was also broadcast yesterday. A man went mad and committed suicide in the square. Some people said that his prosthetic limb infection affected the brain nerves, and some people also said that he believed in it." What a mess of teachings, to **** a new life."

He said contemptuously, "Just burn yourself. There are too many people with brain problems. I wish there were fewer people. Just don't harm others."

An Wujiu looked at the people on the open space outside the window again, their burnt ashes hovered above the flames. These people made him involuntarily think of the duplicates he had experienced.

"It turns out that some people really believe in cults, and technology is already so advanced."

"Of course." Gabriel shook his head, "Didn't you realize that the more advanced technology is, the more empty human beings will be? Everyone has been eroded by technology. People are not like humans, machines are not like machines, and they don't know what to live for and how to live." .Once there is no hope in life, it is either to die, or to find a hope for oneself.”

He also looked at the group of people in the open space, feeling pitiful for them.

"When the emptiness is the most, people are most likely to be taken advantage of by so-called beliefs."

"Where does the god have time to save them?" Gabriel sneered, "Maybe he is waiting for them to come and offer sacrifices to resurrect these so-called false gods and evil gods."

An Wujiu was silent, and he agreed with Gabriel's words in his heart.

He didn't believe that there really were gods. If there were, they wouldn't be moved when they saw believers living miserable lives.

So are they protecting these asylum seekers, or are they using them

After talking about this, Gabriel felt that he was far away, picked up the e-cigarette again, put it in his mouth and took a puff, and exhaled the blue-purple smoke.

Shen Ti raised his hand to fan the cigarette away, and the blue-purple smoke floated around his head.

"Speaking of which, I've asked all my acquaintances about your mother." Gabriel sat down and gestured to An Wujiu, signaling him to sit down too.

An Wujiu listened to him, and sat beside Shen Ti, only to hear Gabriel sigh, and immediately had a bad premonition in his heart.

"My mother..." An Wujiu frowned, "Is something wrong?"

Gabriel looked up at his face, feeling that this kid was miserable, he cared about his relatives as much as himself, but he couldn't help it, so he felt a little pity in his heart.

"Are you sure you remember correctly?" He tried to make An Wujiu recall carefully, "She is really in the hospital, are you correct?"

It's not that An Wujiu didn't doubt his memory.

But those pictures are too profound, engraved in his mind so clearly, he can even recall the light lines on his mother's pale face lying on the hospital bed.

"I'm not sure." An Wujiu still faced the doubt in his heart.

Gabriel loosened his frown and remained silent for a while, as if he was thinking about his words, "It's like this, I asked someone to search all the hospitals in the whole city, big and small, public and private, all of them were found. After that, there is no such name as you gave me."

"Isn't he using his real name?" Shen Ti looked at An Wujiu.

"I also tried other things, such as age and race, and re-screened according to these criteria, but I didn't see a woman who matched your statement. I thought it was strange, so I expanded the scope, not just looking at the list of hospital inpatients , but all citizens." Gabriel looked at An Wujiu, his face gradually becoming a little uneasy.

Seeing An Wujiu's calm face, he finally decided to tell him.

Gabriel twirled the ring on his middle finger, projecting a page for them both.

"A friend found this for me. Let's see if it's your mother."

An Wujiu looked at the projection in front of him, there were a few short lines of words inside, and there was a photo on the top, the woman in the photo was about thirty years old, her eyes were dark but unfocused, her black hair was coiled behind her head, Zhang Xuebai's face was almost bloodless, but very beautiful, very beautiful.

This is a bit different from the mother in An Wujiu's memory, she is younger, and it brings back some bad memories for him.

Suddenly, some never-before-seen images appeared in his mind. The woman in the projection stood in front of him and set fire to the house they were in. Her face was reddened by the fire, and she was extremely beautiful. And he was burned in the fire, and the flames almost rushed to his throat. He was like a witch who was hunted down in the Middle Ages, tied to a pillar and burned alive.

Shen Ti felt that An Wujiu's state was not right, so he stretched out his hand to cover the back of his hand.

"It's okay."

Only then did An Wujiu come out from the memories that did not belong to him, his chest heaved slightly, very restless.

Gabriel felt strange seeing him like this, but he compared An Wujiu in front of him with the woman in the projection.

"If you didn't look so similar, I wouldn't suspect it was her."

An Wujiu stared at the few words on the projection.

At least the name is right.

But the woman above was not suffering from the illness An Wujiu remembered, but mental illness.

And she was already dead, ten years ago, the cause of death was suicide.

Shen Ti frowned slightly.

how so.

He thought of many possibilities, but he never thought that the mother An Wujiu had been looking for had been gone ten years ago.

Turning his face away, Shen Ti looked at An Wujiu, his face was still calm and composed, but his eyes were staring straight at the words on the projection, looking unwilling to give up.

But at present, there is no room for change in this fact.

Gabriel also felt the atmosphere was heavy, after all he was also a person who cared a lot about his family, but he was very bad at comforting, and felt that people like An Wujiu didn't really need comforting, so he went on talking.

"I don't know what's wrong with your memory, so I can only tell you according to what I found." The page jumps to the next page, "This is what I found, this woman's medical history records, hypochondria, In fact, it is not a very serious illness, but she was sent to a mental hospital in the city, which is currently closed down, and there is not much information left, all in all, she chose to commit suicide after entering."

An Wujiu didn't speak, and listened quietly to his description.

"About her previous information, that's all I can find."

The page shows her marital status, which is consistent with An Wujiu's memory. Her husband, like her, is of Asian descent and has a son and a daughter.

But these materials are incomplete. There are no records about his husband's ID and specific work, including An Congnan himself and their children.

An Wujiu thought, if he was her son, then the sister who ran away from home also existed in his memory.

But did she really run away from home

"If you're her child..." Gabriel said, "you should have a citizen chip, just scan it, and you'll get a lot of information."

"I don't have one." An Wujiu said it directly for the convenience of his inquiries.

Gabriel nodded and promised him, "I'll help you find it again. It's really strange. You know, I often have conflicts with customers in my business, so I often check the family background of customers. Not many like this."

Shen Ti asked: "How do you say?"

"If you have a chip, as long as you can find the ID, every transaction from your birth to your death will be recorded. How can people have privacy now? A person is just a database. Even the color of underwear you wear on the bed is not important." can find out."

Gabriel said it vulgarly, but it is true, and this is what An Wujiu finds strange.

"It's the first time I see such little information, and it feels like it was deliberately hidden or deleted."

Gabriel took another puff of cigarette, "But there are still many places to investigate. The closed mental hospital is a good place to attack. Don't worry, you help me get rid of the enemy. Of course, I will help you to the end."

Just as he was speaking, someone knocked on the door outside, as if calling Gabriel, saying that someone was causing trouble down there.

"That's all for today." Gabriel put down the cigarette in his hand, got up and said to the two, "You will stay with me tonight, I have prepared a room for you, and someone will take you there in a while. I heard that the altar The games here are very dangerous, I guess you are also tired, so relax and rest with me for a while."

Although Gabriel has the looks and physique of a gangster, he is actually a warm-hearted man.

An Wujiu didn't want to please him, and thought that he and Shen Ti couldn't even stay in a hotel, and now going to Yang Erci's place would be a bother, Gabriel's place is indeed a good place to go.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." Gabriel patted him on the shoulder, and hurriedly followed the subordinates waiting outside the door and left.

Less than a minute later, the person Gabriel said would take them to the suite came. It was a young boy with freckles on his face, which reminded An Wujiu of Josh.

"You two please follow me."

The little boy spoke quickly and enthusiastically. In the elevator, he kept introducing them what kind of wine and desserts they had here, but An Wujiu never responded, only Shen Ti responded with a few words.

Until they got to the top floor, the boy gave them two wristbands, "801 is yours, you can live in 802. If you need anything, you can find me by pressing the button on the wristband, and I will come up to help you immediately." You serve."

Shen Ti is originally a person who is hot on the outside and cold on the inside, unless he takes the initiative, he is the type who is not willing to fight, but he thinks that An Wujiu is by his side, although he looks indifferent on the outside, he is actually the most polite and best The speaker, thinking of him, Shen Ti couldn't ignore the waiter in front of him.

"Please serve us some of your recommended dishes tonight. I guess I'll be hungry in a while, thank you."

The other party smiled brightly, and there was a little blush in the ears, "You are welcome, guest. I will go down and order for you."

When the little boy was far away, Shen Ti heard the sound of the elevator door opening, and then turned to An Wujiu, "Do you want to live with me, or do you want to stay by yourself for a while?"

He knew that An Wujiu was not in a good mood, so he wanted to give him enough space.

An Wujiu raised his eyes, the dim light in the corridor shone on his face, making his facial features and outline softer than usual.

He doesn't know what he wants now.

But Shen Ti gave up waiting for his answer, but chose to take the bracelet from An Wujiu's hand and put it in his own pocket.

"Didn't I say, you have to take the initiative to choose me."

He lightly took An Wujiu's hand, intertwined with his fingers, then opened one of the doors and led him in.

The decoration in the room is white, not cozy, but the space is large and clean.

"I'm only with you, you don't need to talk." Shen Ti's voice was gentle, "Tell me what you want, and tell me what you don't want me to do."

He doesn't want to pretend in front of An Wujiu that he is good at loving others, he is not, and he is also afraid of making mistakes, so he needs An Wujiu's guidance.

Seeing the concentration and tenderness on Shen Ti's face, An Wujiu suddenly thought of the way he was when he first met him.

It's hard to imagine that this person is completely his own now.

An Wujiu didn't say anything, just reached out his hand and unbuttoned Shen Ti's windbreaker.

Shen Ti felt his back tense for a moment.

He didn't know it was tension.

But An Wujiu just untied his coat, then stretched out his hands and hugged him.

He put his face against Shen Ti's collarbone, and wrapped his arms around his back. The whole person seems to have got into Shen Ti's coat, escaping from everything in the outside world.

At this moment, An Wujiu desperately needs the feeling of close contact, the full smell and the blending temperature to prove that the person in front of him is not an illusion.

It's not a beautiful bubble that was given to him and then taken back.

Shen Ti's heart suddenly softened.

He discovered a strange fact.

He used to be completely incapable of understanding why people were saddened by death.

People are always going to die, sooner or later.

No one's life is precious enough for Shen Ti to feel sorry for.

But at this moment, he seemed to be able to feel the pain in An Wujiu's heart, like a cold river, slowly flowing from him to himself.

"So she's already dead." An Wujiu's voice was very soft, as if the wind would blow it away.

When he learned that the mother he was looking for might be dead, his mind went blank.

He didn't know why there was such a big discrepancy between reality and memory, but it was true.

Because of the lack of memory, even the grief seemed incoherent and abrupt. It seemed that he should find out more about his life experience and why he lost his memory, instead of indulging in this ten-year-delayed pain.

But no matter how slow you are, the pain will still spread.

He couldn't help raising his hand, and gently stroked the hair on the back of An Wujiu's head.

Shen Ti thought for no reason that he once met a mother with a child in a certain game.

So he imitated the mother's way of coaxing the child, put his palm behind An Wujiu, and patted his back lightly.

This made An Wujiu feel cared for for the first time.

But the strange thing is that this feeling seems very familiar, as if he had received such a blessing in his childhood.

However, he is very clear that even his memory is false, let alone the feeling of illusory.

An Wujiu raised his face and looked into Shen Ti's green eyes.

Shen Ti's left hand slipped down and rested on his waist, and he lowered his head naturally, and kissed his lips lightly, like a dragonfly on the water.

"You still have me."

Shen Ti kissed him again.

This person who was once weary of the world and only wanted to die soon is now tenderly making a promise to An Wujiu.

"I will not leave you."