Earth Era

Chapter 12: Memories of the Past

Another sleepless night welcomed Zhao Huasheng. Listening to the cold night wind tapping on the windows and embracing the dim moonlight, Zhao Huasheng tossed and turned on the bed and couldn't fall asleep.

Although Zhao Huasheng has been without sleep for more than forty hours now, he still doesn't feel a bit of fatigue. An inexplicable force is supporting Zhao Huasheng's spirit and body, allowing them to maintain ample vitality in the quiet night.

It gradually became morning. Zhao Huasheng's face became more haggard, and his hair was even more disheveled, like a chicken's nest. Zhao Huasheng felt a little hungry, and then suddenly remembered that there were a few bags of milk in the refrigerator. So Zhao Huasheng put on some clothes and crawled out of bed. The sudden dizziness made Zhao Huasheng frown slightly, and his body was a bit shaky when he stood up. So Zhao Huasheng leaned against the bed, steadied himself, and then wobbled out of the bedroom.

Just as Zhao Huasheng had taken out a bag of milk and was about to drink it, he heard a knock at the door.

Zhao Huasheng was a single man and usually had few friends, so apart from the water collector and delivery person, no one usually came to his place. But it was still early in the morning and obviously not the time for the water collector. Zhao Huasheng had not ordered any delivery either.

Without thinking much, Zhao Huasheng walked to the door and opened it, only to see a young woman of about 1.7 meters tall, slender figure, with shoulder length hair, and wearing black glasses.

It took Zhao Huasheng a moment to remember that this was Li Wei. In the meeting, he had a brief conversation with Li Wei.

"Just woke up?" Li Wei raised her arm and gestured to Zhao Huasheng with the breakfast in her hand: "I remembered something about my brother, so I came to visit you. I guess you haven't had breakfast yet, so I brought you breakfast."

"Oh, thank you," Zhao Huasheng said. "Please come in."

Zhao Huasheng turned around and wanted to take Li Wei into the room, but as soon as he turned around, an irresistible dizziness rushed over Zhao Huasheng. The world turned black in the blink of an eye, and it seemed that many lights were flowing in Zhao Huasheng's mind, and in a moment, the world turned upside down. Zhao Huasheng fell heavily to the ground. Before losing consciousness, Zhao Huasheng vaguely heard a scream from Li Wei.

Looking at the fallen Zhao Huasheng, Li Wei was at a loss with the breakfast in her hands. Just put down the breakfast box, want to help Zhao Huasheng up, just see from the balcony walked out a neatly dressed black suit, short hair, expression resolute indifferent middle-aged man, is Meng Zhuo.

Meng Zhuo walked up to Zhao Huasheng and pressed a finger on the carotid artery in his neck, feeling it for a moment before lifting his eyelids to look at her. He then stood up and said, "He's fine. He just fainted from overwork."

"O-overwork?" Li Wei stammered, "What should I do? Should I call an ambulance?"

Meng Zhuo gave Li Wei a glance and she immediately stood still. He reached into his pocket and took out an object resembling a cell phone. After pressing a few buttons, five young men in military uniforms burst into Zhao Huasheng's room. Without exchanging any words, they took out a stretcher and swiftly placed Zhao Huasheng onto it. They left the room in less than thirty seconds.

Mengzhu asked, "I heard you say...you have something to tell about your brother? Do you want to go see him with me?"

Li Wei nodded unconsciously.

"Let's go," Mengzhu said, turning around and walking away. Li Wei quickly followed behind Mengzhu.

In his dream, Zhao Huasheng had many strange dreams. When he woke up, Zhao Huasheng almost completely forgot the dream, only remembering that he had experienced many things in the dream, as if...he had also slept for a long time.

What Zhao Huasheng saw when he opened his eyes was a white ceiling, and an infusion bottle hanging from the support bar next to him. A soft tube extended from the infusion bottle and continuously injected the transparent liquid into his body, and there was a strong smell of disinfectant in the air.

When Zhao HuaSheng turned his head, he saw Meng Zhuo standing motionless by the window of the sickroom, like a mountain. Li Wei was sitting beside him, peeling an apple. Seeing Zhao HuaSheng wake up, Li Wei smiled at him and said, "Lie down here first and I'll go call the doctor." The doctor came shortly afterwards and gave Zhao HuaSheng a brief examination, saying, "There's nothing wrong with you. You just fainted from overwork and low blood sugar. Just rest and have something to eat and you'll be fine." Li Wei stood up and said to the doctor, "Thank you, thank you very much." The doctor left and Meng Zhuo still looked out the window. Li Wei sat back down beside Zhao HuaSheng.

"You said you have something to tell me about your brother?" Zhao Huasheng asked.

"Yes," Li Wei nodded, "I remembered after a while that my brother asked me to make a high-precision light intensity detector for him about a year ago...you know, I work in the optics institute. The accuracy he required was very high, this type of instrument is usually used in the biological and medical industry, I'm not too familiar with stellar physics, but I don't think stellar physics would need such a thing. I remember I asked him what he wanted it for, but he didn't tell me."

When Zhao Huasheng heard Li Wei mention the high-precision light intensity detector, a ripple of anticipation rose in his heart, but when Li Wei said she didn't know what Li Qi wanted it for, he felt a little disappointed.

"Oh." Zhao Huasheng said, "I understand now."

"You know?" Li Wei was slightly surprised, but she didn't ask and continued, "Besides this, there's one more thing. I don't know what would be useful to you, so I thought I'd just tell you all of it."

"Please speak." Zhao Huasheng nodded.

"My brother has been single; this is something you know. We are both orphans, we have relied on each other since we were young. In order to take care of me, he is already almost forty years old but still has no girlfriend, so I am also a bit anxious... I really hope my brother can have a happy family, so I have always paid attention to his emotional matters."

"Mm." Zhao Huasheng said.

I asked someone to introduce potential partners to my brother, but he showed no interest. However, about a year ago, my brother suddenly stopped returning home and stayed in his studio all day, as if he was doing something. Whenever he met me, he always looked distracted. I felt strange, so I paid attention to this matter. One day, my brother hadn't returned home for several days in a row, so I took breakfast to his office. The security guard and the others were familiar with me, so they didn't stop me. When I pushed open the door of his office, I saw him tapping something in front of the computer, and there was a chat window on the screen, like a certain kind of instant messaging tool.

"Mmhmm," Zhao Huasheng said.

"After my brother heard the knock on the door, he immediately closed the chat window. He turned around and saw it was me, and immediately scolded me sternly, saying that I should knock on the door before entering in the future. Our relationship has always been very close, and yet he scolded me for such a thing. I was curious and began to think: could it be that my brother had some relationship with a woman in secret and was too shy to let me see it?"

Suddenly, Zhao Huasheng's mind flashed with the conversation record which the researchers from the Institute of Computational Science had restored from Li Qi's broken hard drive.

"Who was Li Qi talking to?" Zhao Huasheng asked.

"I don't know," Li Wei shook her head sadly, "At the time, I thought my brother finally had someone he liked and I was happy for him in my heart. But my brother is a very serious and inflexible person, and I was afraid that the person he liked would be scared off by his seriousness, so I wanted to find out who this person was. I went to make contact with her first, to help my brother make progress. So, on a later day, when my brother was taking a break at home, I snuck to his workplace, lied to the guard about getting something for my brother, got the key to his office, and opened his computer..."

Zhao Huasheng's breath began to become urgent. Li Qi's computer may have been hiding a huge secret, a secret that may have been related to the future of mankind. The scientists of the Institute of Computing Science had spent countless hours trying to restore less than two hundred bytes of data, and now... Li Qi's sister, Li Wei, had opened it when the computer was intact.

Zhao Huasheng trembled as he asked, "Tell me, what did you see?"

Li Wei gave Zhao Huasheng a slightly surprised look, seeming to be puzzled by why Zhao Huasheng was so excited.

There were many strange scientific programs on the computer, and I didn't understand them, nor did I pay attention to them. I found the instant messenger I had seen before and opened it, but there was only blank except for the few recent conversations. There was no record of the past.

"Do you remember what these conversations were about?" Zhao Huasheng asked anxiously.

"I remember," Li Wei said, nodding."The conversation was very short, only a few dozen words, so I remember it very clearly."

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