The weather was scorching hot, and the old air conditioner made a squeaking sound that made people feel dizzy.
"Hey... wake up! Wake up!"
An impatient voice came from above, awakening the young man from his dream. He jumped up from his desk, squinted his eyes and looked at the backlight, but saw the boss with a stern face. He suddenly shuddered in his heart and lost all sleep.
He quickly defended: "I'm sorry, I'm a little sleepy just after lunch. I..."
"Work hard and don't be lazy." The boss just glared at him, said nothing, and quickly turned and left.
The young man breathed a sigh of relief.
He sat back on the chair and rubbed his temples. His mind was obviously still a little groggy after waking up. He didn't know why, but he felt like he was having a dream, a long and complicated dream. That dream seemed to have exhausted all his energy, causing him to be extremely exhausted now, as if he had gone through nine or eighty-one hardships.
But... the strange thing is that he can't remember what he dreamed about.
This was originally a very strange thing, but it could be that he was extremely dizzy at the moment, or he could be guided by some mysterious voice. Therefore, he did not delve into it and ignored it as a matter of course. The boss hadn't gone far yet when he suddenly turned around and looked back. The young man put the matter behind him and lowered his head, pretending to be concentrating on his work.
When he lowered his head, he saw his salary slip placed on the edge of the table. The pitiful numbers seemed even thinner after being deducted again and again. However, in the name column, the entire font was blurred, and his name was as if it had been mosaicd, making it completely unclear.
"Oh... why do you feel less and less?"
For some reason, the young man didn't notice the mosaic of names. He just took a few glances at the pay slip and then put it down, as if there was nothing strange about it. He clicked the mouse and immediately opened the work file on the computer, preparing to continue modifying the PPT for his boss.
His name was also written on the file folder, but it was also vague, and he ignored it again.
And when he started working, the world seemed to press the fast forward button, and everyone's movements became rapid and mechanical, coming and going in the office. The hour hand on the wall turned quickly, time passed by, from two to eight in a blink of an eye, and the sky also turned dark in an instant.
The young man walked out of the boss's office dejectedly and stretched himself. Everyone in the office was gone. He returned to his desk, turned off the computer and packed his things. Finally, carrying his bag, he habitually waved to the empty seats of his colleagues on both sides, turned off the lights, and slowly left through the door.
He came to the elevator and pressed the button. With a ding-dong sound, the world in front of me suddenly turned into a snowflake.
Then, the picture appeared again, and the young man had returned to the cubicle he rented. The lights were dim and the electric fan was blowing, but it couldn't make this cramped little space much cooler. The laptop was placed aside, and he was lying on his bed, browsing the web pages on it aimlessly.
The news page of an unknown software popped up again. He glanced at it and suddenly saw a push article titled "Benjamin Franklin's Kite Attracts Thunder."
… Does this count as news? He couldn't help but think to himself that maybe the editor didn't know what to write, so he used stories from junior high school physics books to make up the word count. But what was outrageous was that their boss had no objection and gave it a The most prominent title.
There are so many strange things.
The young man closed the page without hesitation.
beep! The moment he closed the page, his laptop automatically crashed!
"… Hold."
The young man rubbed his head and felt a terrible headache. He knew that his notebook might have to be sent for repair again, but at this moment, his depressed mood made him too lazy to care, so he threw the notebook aside, picked up his mobile phone, and opened the browser.
The mobile browser is stuck on an encyclopedia page for no apparent reason.
"Bible Story—Cain and Abel"
What the hell? He had never searched for anything like this.
The young man immediately closed the page, but his hand seemed to accidentally click on another link. Then, another news page popped up, which read: "Queen XXX of the United Kingdom, a record-breaking ruler, what is the secret of her longevity?"
A strange feeling came over me.
He didn't know what was going on, but some pictures seemed to start flashing in his mind.
Light and shadow, castles, armies, flying ice ships...these images look very far away from daily life, like a world that only exists in movie special effects. But for some reason, the young man didn't feel strange, but rather familiar.
Why
Finally, he remembered the dream.
"Dream... what was in that dream? Is it really just a dream?" The young man covered his head. The picture that just flashed gave him some inspiration, but he still couldn't recall it. He felt that the dream seemed extremely important. He had forgotten something very important and had to remember it.
But soon, an inexplicable sleepiness came over him, making him dizzy. There seemed to be a voice in my ears saying: "Go to sleep... You are too tired, don't force yourself, just take a nap... Don't think about those unpleasant things... "
The young man soon became extremely sleepy and confused.
He instinctively felt a sense of danger and kept warning himself that he must not sleep. When he fell asleep, he would forget everything and lose all important things. But he was so sleepy that he couldn't resist the hypnotic voice, and his heavy eyelids closed little by little in the resistance.
Buzz-pop!
Suddenly, the phone vibrated violently, even causing him to fall to the ground. It made a crisp sound, waking the young man up from the edge of drowsiness.
He picked up the phone subconsciously.
Before he could answer the phone, a mechanical voice came from inside.
"If you need human service, please press zero."
As if being struck by lightning, the young man was shocked and enlightened. And everything around him, the stuffy cubicle, the yellow lights... everything in this world suddenly became illusory and became farther and farther away from him.
It was just him, his phone, and his laptop.
He was holding his mobile phone, and various images kept flashing back in his mind, fragmented, but extremely real. At that moment, he felt that he had reached the edge of the bubble. With just a light touch, the entire bubble that isolated him would disappear.
The phone just repeated that sentence over and over again, with a calm tone, but an inexplicable sense of impatience, as if it was urging something.
The hypnotic voice came to the young man's ears again: "Give up... Why give up the life that truly belongs to you? You belong to this place, why do you have to think of all those unpleasant things? Give up... "
With two voices mixed in his ears, the young man took a deep breath, lowered his head, and looked at the "0" that kept flashing on the keyboard of his mobile phone.
Then, he pressed it without hesitation.
Ding!
There was a soft sound, very clear.
The two voices that kept repeating in his ears stopped abruptly. At the same time, the keyboard interface of the phone also disappeared, but was replaced by an emoticon that appeared in the center of the screen - funny.
And in the next second, the whole world was shattered.