strictlysupreme Chapter 46 The Vanishing Memories
Chapter 46 The Vanishing Memories
Ji Chenyu, with tears in his eyes and a surge of anger, earned 500,000 yuan and excitedly ran to the nursing home to deliver a down jacket and food to his godmother.
Qi Te had told me not to buy too much, just enough for my mom to eat for three days.
Although they are all old neighbors, and petty thieves wouldn't dare to steal from a nursing home full of elderly, infirm, and destitute people, one should still be wary of others.
My mother has the mind of a six-year-old child. She is completely unsuspecting and has no ability to resist. Giving her too much food and clothing might actually harm her.
Prices in District 9 are low, but it's impossible to buy any decent meat. Most of what you get are scraps of synthetic meat, and the vegetables and fruits are not fresh either.
Every winter, leafy green vegetables almost disappear, and most people can only barely get through the winter by relying on canned food and nutritional supplement capsules distributed by neighborhoods once a week.
Growing vegetables? As a native of Long County, I certainly can't let this traditional craft be lost.
The problem is, people dare to grow it but not dare to eat it.
Before the establishment of the Federation, the world experienced a century-long period of catastrophe. This was followed by wars fought over the plunder of resources.
The area suffered immense loss of life and severe environmental pollution.
More than a century has passed since the founding of the Federation, yet half of the world's population still struggles to make ends meet.
Dragon County is one of the three major counties of the Federation, and Sea City, as one of the four most developed main cities in Dragon County, is relatively well-supplied in terms of resources. However, most of the resources are in the hands of conglomerates, so resources are naturally prioritized for supplying the inner city.
Haicheng is quite large, with an irregular circular shape. The very center is Zone 1, and the closer to the center, the safer it is.
The ninth district, located on the outermost edge, is separated from the isolation zone only by an electric fence. Once outside the city defenses, the border area is right there.
Every three months, a professional team dressed in protective suits and armed to the teeth will come to the Ninth District to conduct a comprehensive inspection.
The residents of the Ninth District are well aware that they are actually a "safe and livable line" for Haicheng.
Several huge dust removal towers are erected in the city center, but the dust and haze cannot be completely removed. After filtration, a large amount of residual dust is still released into the outer ring.
Therefore, the sky in the Ninth District is always gray.
Acid rain in spring and summer, and snow erosion in winter are common occurrences.
The water is piped from the main city. It's not as clean as the water enjoyed by the rich, but it's still considered safe. However, the soil cannot be changed.
The residents of District 9 had already tried growing their own vegetables, but the vegetables grown from the expensive seeds still had excessively high radiation levels.
If you're really starving, you can still eat to fill your stomach, but your body will inevitably suffer various effects afterward. Decades ago, a wave of birth defects occurred in District 9.
Even today, the ordinary people living in the Ninth District may appear to have no problem with food and clothing, but in reality, they are extremely vulnerable.
A sudden drop in temperature can be enough to finish off a player at full health.
In the old neighborhood where Qi Te lives, there is no heating or air conditioning. The walls are relatively thick, but they are leaky everywhere due to years of disrepair.
The winter rain is incessant, damp and cold to the bone. Once the temperature drops below minus ten degrees Celsius, the entire neighborhood could be wiped out.
Now that he had money, the first thing Qi Te thought of was moving.
After downloading several platforms and looking around, Qi Te couldn't help but want to curse.
The housing prices are far higher than I imagined, but I can rent.
However, even in the eighth district, the cheapest one-bedroom apartment with a bathroom costs four thousand a month.
Prices are even higher near the college, starting at six thousand.
I can afford this expense, but the problem is that I can't stay home with my mother every day. Hiring a live-in caregiver would be quite expensive.
Qi Te saved several rental listings, planning to contact the landlords after finding a suitable tenant.
A dull ache shot through his brain, and a slight dizziness washed over him. Qi Te took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Just as he closed his eyes to rest, that blurry image resurfaced in his mind.
Fang Shu did not put up any resistance and cooperated by following Cao Tengfei and Lin Jun to the Investigation Bureau to give a statement, naturally because she was fearless.
This calm and confident demeanor comes from the "Purgatory of Memories".
As the other person said, painful memories are things that everyone tries hard to forget, but can never forget.
Childhood and adolescence are the happiest memories of many people's lives. But for Qi Te, it was the past he least wanted to mention. His grandfather's passing was a lingering pain in his heart.
The purgatory of memories not only pulled him back to that time, but also amplified his emotions tenfold, even dozens of times.
He was like someone trapped in a quagmire of grief, sinking into it, unable to escape, and with no intention of escaping. He hated himself, hated everyone who had hurt him, and hated the whole world.
There was nothing but despair.
The portal of light seemed to possess an irresistible attraction, drawing him in irresistibly.
Just as he was about to disappear into the portal, a hand grabbed his ankle and pulled him out.
............................
At that moment, darkness vanished and time flowed backward.
He saw that when he got out of school, his mother would always stand at the bottom of the stairwell, smiling as she came forward to take his heavy schoolbag.
Whenever he saw Ji Chenyu, who was half a head taller than him at the time, standing up to protect him whenever he was bullied by his classmates, even if he lost a tooth, he would pat his chest and say that he could take on seven people at once, how amazing!
I saw the teacher privately talk to Grandpa, telling him not to get angry with those parents, and saying that Qi Te has good grades and will definitely be able to leave the Ninth District in the future and have a better future.
He also saw the old man, who had gotten up early, hunched over as he prepared breakfast. Although he was coughing badly, there was no sign of pain on his face; he was even humming a tuneless melody...
In that instant, Chite traversed his entire life up to that point, but what he saw was completely different from the purgatory of memories.
Ultimately, he seemed to have reverted to infancy.
A cradle, a star pendant, tinkling music, a mother, and a blurry figure from behind.
Qi Te seemed to hear the other person say something; yes, he heard it, but he couldn't remember what it was.
Who is that?
Judging from the back view, it should be a man.
Could it be that...?
Qi Te suddenly opened his eyes, and an extremely unfamiliar word flashed through his mind.
Father?!
Could that man be my father?!
Zite tried hard to recall, but the memory of that moment became increasingly unclear, like a speeding train that was getting further and further away from him.
It's a strange feeling, like that memory is being forcibly erased.
Fang Shu?
No.
Zite shook his head, denying this conjecture.
Whether it's Uncle Yue's popular science explanation or personal experience, it's enough to prove that consciousness memes do not have the ability to remember simultaneously.
Since there is no synchronized memory, the other party cannot specifically erase that small segment of memory.
Whatever the reason, this memory is gradually fading away. Realizing this, Qi Te quickly opened his phone and recorded the incident by voice, saving it to his cloud drive so that he would not forget it completely in the future.
Then he realized a problem he had never seriously considered before.
Grandpa never mentioned his father.
When Qi Te was little, he asked countless times why other people had fathers, but he didn't. To this question, his grandfather would always shake his head and say that he didn't know why either.
Qi Te thought his grandfather was just making excuses for him; the man he called his father must be despicable. He even suspected that the truth might be true, as others had said, that his mother had been assaulted by that man, resulting in her pregnancy.
So, what exactly happened?
If that blurry figure really was my father, why had he never appeared in my life?
No, it's not that it never happened. That fleeting image from infancy is enough to prove that the other person did indeed exist.
Why did it disappear in the following ten years or so?
Why did Grandpa not mention it at all, and even look confused when he mentioned the word "father"?
and many more!
Qi Te suddenly frowned.
In the image of the infant, the mother faces him, her eyes filled with sadness.
Her lively eyes and expressive face are completely different from her current mother.
Something must have happened.
Two months ago, I turned eighteen. That means something must have happened eighteen years ago.
Thinking of this, Qi Te took out his phone and entered keywords such as "Qi surname man, eighteen years ago, Haicheng, major event".
The search results appeared quickly; however, after searching one after another, I found no results that were even remotely related to what I was looking for.
Qi Te put down his phone and immediately thought of the key person in this matter.
If my mother had been a normal person eighteen years ago, she would definitely have known what had happened.
Therefore, as long as there is a way to cure my mother, I can get the answer I want.
Let's go back to the starting point.
Qi Te chose Haicheng University for two reasons: firstly, he couldn't leave his mother behind and the city; and secondly, because of Liu Baichuan.
Lao Liu's main research focus is gene editing, and his current project is to test the feasibility of reshaping the gene chain using cloning technology. If successful, it could not only cure some incurable diseases at their root but also solve a crucial global problem.
The most common cause of intellectual disability is genetics. Functional segments of DNA determine the development and function of an organism.
Zite chose bioengineering, not because of any grand ambitions; his ultimate goal was simply to make a breakthrough in the field of genetics.
One day, I will cure my mother!