That evening, when Liang Yu exited the subway station, the sky was already dark. The streetlights glowed yellow, the road was crowded with cars—red and white lights streaming together in a dazzling river. The sidewalks were packed with people in small groups. Street vendors hawked their wares—“Fresh apples, just a few yuan per pound!”—and the city was a cacophony of voices and engines.
“That’s when I felt it,” Liang Yu said. “It wasn’t dizziness, and the world didn’t spin. If I had to describe it, it was a sense of detachment—like the background blurring in a video, as if everything around me was fading out, or maybe I was fading out myself.
“The lights—streetlights, traffic lights, car taillights—were painfully bright, as if magnified ten thousand times. From a physics standpoint, I must have gotten closer to them, but subjectively, I felt the opposite—I felt infinitely far away from everything. I could barely hear anything, even though the sounds were still there. In that instant, they all seemed to recede from me.
“My thoughts entered a strange state—no joy, no sadness, completely disconnected from myself. It was as if my mind had left my body and the world, and for a moment, I saw everything from a perspective beyond humanity.”
As Liang Yu spoke, he grew agitated, but quickly caught himself and smiled sheepishly, returning to his usual reserved self.
“Dr. Zhang, am I… relapsing?” he asked.
Liang Yu was eighteen, a freshman at Qingyuan University, with a history of schizophrenia. His alternate personality had been dormant for years, and his doctor had said the odds of it resurfacing were nearly zero. Three days earlier, the entire student body had taken a mental health survey, and he was the only one called in by Dr. Zhang from the counseling center. Dr. Zhang had made him some coffee and asked if he’d had any unusual experiences lately, so Liang Yu told him everything.
“Relapsing how?” Dr. Zhang asked.
“Schizophrenia…” Liang Yu hesitated. “Weren’t you calling me in because of my history? I thought you saw signs of a relapse in the test results… Wasn’t that it?”
“Of course not.”
Liang Yu breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s much more serious than that,” Dr. Zhang continued. “I wrote that survey myself. It wasn’t really about mental health, but something else—what you called detachment. I hid that concept in many of the questions, laid traps, so to speak. For most students, those traps were harmless. But you’re different.
“You knew which answers were technically correct, but you stepped into every trap anyway. That’s because I designed options that matched your true feelings even better than the ‘right’ ones. You couldn’t resist them, like a moth to a flame.”
Liang Yu waited anxiously, but Dr. Zhang didn’t continue. Finally, he asked, “So what does that mean?”
Dr. Zhang smiled. “It means I’m sure you’re the one I’ve been looking for.”
That answer threw Liang Yu for a loop. Dr. Zhang didn’t give him time to process, but asked, “Liang Yu, what do you think about the concept of time?”
Liang Yu was baffled for a moment before stammering, “Um… Time is linear… Time flows like water, never to return, so we should cherish it?”
Dr. Zhang laughed. “That’s a bit poetic! I’m a psychologist, not a literature teacher.”
Liang Yu chuckled awkwardly.
But then Dr. Zhang grew serious. He stood and looked Liang Yu in the eye. “What I’m about to say, you must remember. Time is never a straight line, but a vast circle, with countless points called time nodes. Each node is itself a small circle, filled with infinite points called possibilities. Possibilities form the small circles, and the small circles connect to make the great circle of time.”
Liang Yu was lost. He understood every word, but together, they made no sense.
Dr. Zhang saw his confusion and explained, “You’ve heard of parallel universes, right? Every minute, every second, countless parallel universes branch off. I call these possibilities. Each moment is a collection of possibilities.
“In other words, possibilities make up every moment, every time node. All the nodes together form the whole concept of time.” He paused, letting Liang Yu think. “So, do you still think time is linear?”
Liang Yu’s mind raced. After a while, he said, “You mean, time isn’t the irreversible thing people think it is—it’s always changing… No, not changing!”
His eyes lit up. “Time is change itself! Right now, I’m here talking to you, but in a parallel world, another me might be playing games, listening to music, or reading. Every possibility is a parallel world, and all those possibilities together make up this moment!”
“Exactly,” Dr. Zhang said, impressed. “You’re even smarter than I thought.”
Liang Yu felt a joy he couldn’t describe, as if he’d grasped some vital truth. For a moment, he felt he and Dr. Zhang were the only two people in the world who understood.
But then Dr. Zhang said something that shattered his happiness.
“Humanity is about to go extinct. This world is about to end.”
If Dr. Zhang had started the conversation with that, Liang Yu would have written him off as crazy and walked out. Even now, he was tempted to think so.
Dr. Zhang smiled. “You might think I’m insane. Maybe in some parallel universe, I am. But here and now, I stand by every word.”
Liang Yu nodded politely, just to be polite. “So, what’s ending the world?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” This time, Liang Yu dropped the formalities.
“War, plague, meteorites… There are countless possibilities. It doesn’t matter.”
“How can it not matter…”
Liang Yu started to argue, but then understood. Of course, it didn’t matter. Every possibility is a parallel universe—if it fits the rules, it will happen, just not necessarily here.
“But if you don’t know what’s ending the world, how can you be sure our world will end?”
Liang Yu wondered if Dr. Zhang was talking about some other universe. He didn’t care about those.
“At this time node, all parallel universes are on the brink of destruction—including ours,” Dr. Zhang said. “Because of a technological bottleneck.”
Liang Yu was confused again. “A technological bottleneck?”
He thought: This is absurd. He’d come for counseling, expecting to talk about mental health, not philosophy or science.
Dr. Zhang continued, “It took humanity millions of years to go from the Stone Age to the Bronze and Iron Ages. From there to the Steam Age, only a few thousand years. Then, from steam to electricity to information, progress sped up…”
Liang Yu was getting sleepy. History class, he thought.
Dr. Zhang asked, “Liang Yu, what era are we in now?”
“The Information Age.”
“Why are we still in the Information Age?” Dr. Zhang pressed. “What marks the arrival of a new era?”
“New technology…” Liang Yu realized what Dr. Zhang meant by a bottleneck. “But you can’t just say the world will end because we haven’t invented something new! There’s no set pattern to technological revolutions!”
Dr. Zhang countered, “Are you sure there’s no pattern?”
“In just a few centuries, we’ve achieved more than in millions of years before. That’s a clear peak—a sign we’re either about to reach a new height or a turning point. Unfortunately, this time, we haven’t broken through.”
“So we hit a turning point…” Liang Yu wanted to say, “So what?” History says progress is a spiral, right? You’re being dramatic, Dr. Zhang.
“Exactly, a turning point!” Dr. Zhang said. “But when in history has humanity ever truly regressed?”
Liang Yu was silent.
“Did we ever go back from the Bronze Age to the Stone Age? From steam to iron? What happens when the Information Age hits a turning point? Do we go back to the Electric Age, the Steam Age…”
He lowered his voice. “Or the Stone Age?
Liang Yu shivered, recalling Einstein’s famous words: “I don’t know what weapons will be used in World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
“Human history only has one true turning point,” Dr. Zhang paused, “and that’s extinction.”
Liang Yu protested, “But isn’t it possible to just maintain the status quo? Didn’t humanity wield bronze and iron for thousands of years, fighting endless wars without ever really advancing?”
Dr. Zhang sighed. “But humanity can’t wield nuclear weapons and fight for thousands of years. That’s a rule set by the Creator: either advance, or perish.”
Liang Yu fell silent.
After a long pause, he asked, “So you’re saying the world will end in war?”
“I never said that,” Dr. Zhang replied. “But everyone’s preparing for the endgame. All the great nations are pouring resources into space technology. Do you really think it’s just about exploring the universe?”
“Isn’t it?”
“It’s about survival. The Spacefaring Faction believes that one day, we’ll break free from the solar system and find the edge of the universe. Maybe there, the secrets left by the gods—or the threshold to the fourth dimension—are hidden. If humanity can find that threshold, maybe we can escape our predetermined fate.”
“So, Dr. Zhang, do you believe in creationism?”
Dr. Zhang’s tone was calm. “Call it gods, higher-dimensional beings, or the Creator—whatever you like. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that such an existence must be real. Humans, as three-dimensional beings, have painted countless pictures and created entire two-dimensional worlds. Deep down, we understand that every lower-dimensional world is created by a higher-dimensional being. Humanity insists that our three-dimensional world is unique and naturally formed, denying the existence of higher beings—ultimately, out of fear.”
Chapter 03
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