Someone woke me up.

I was scared of myself screaming again, or 774's sobbing that night. Nightmares I can't wake up from.

is a young firefighter.

"Are you alright, miss?" His face was so close to me that his face was a little deformed, "Are you hurt?" ”

I need to wake up, and I'm a little confused. I looked at him in confusion, and then at the fire trucks and the flames, and I was worried about the overheated steam, which was deadly. Memories become flexible. The fire reminded me of the past, the sounds of conversation coming from underwater, and the policemen and red lights surrounding the corpse of the mentor. But there's something missing in all of this.

"You're burned." I didn't feel the pain until the firefighters alerted me.

"Oh." I calmly looked at the blackened sleeves and miserable skin, as if I had been splashed with sulfuric acid. The world begins to spin. I'm exhausted.

There is light.

"What's your name?" I've been asked, even though I feel like I've been asked this question so many times that there's no need to ask it. I tried to focus on the nurse's anxious eyes. I'm not sure I've answered the same name so many times.

"Amandina." I'm exhausted. Meaningless sounds.

"How old are you?" This number has not come out for a long time, but pi, Feigenbaum's chaos function, and many other things have been skimmed in my mind.

“…… 17. Or 18. I don't know, I can't remember. I'm fine. ”

"You're having a concussion."

"I'm fine. I want to get out of bed. "That warm hand stopped me. I was restless. "My colleague ......"

"There were no fatalities this time, just burns of varying degrees, and they would all be out of danger." The doctor tried to calm my emotions, and I thought it was true for the time being.

"I have one more question," I said as he was leaving, though they obviously didn't want the wounded to ask too many questions, "is there a blind man who is also safe?" ”

"He? He wasn't there. "I don't know if it's a sigh of relief or more skepticism. They started taking X-rays and giving me fluids. I watched as they wrapped my arms in gauze. "Luckily, these injuries hurt a lot, but they were all minor burns, and they didn't even leave scars." I lay back on my bed, smelling the familiar smell of mercury bromide and bandages, breathed a sigh of relief, stared at the hourglass-like stillness, and quickly fell asleep.

After two weeks, it seemed like I could be discharged, I was fed up with the feeling of transition from life to death that hospital gave me, and I went to a private hospital where a special service was offered before I met a mentor. End the life of a person who is very likely to commit suicide. There were three people waiting in line to die, and I felt the closest to me then, and even now. Just as it was my turn, a hand appeared in front of me, the hand of a typical business person, with lead-gray nails neatly trimmed. I slowly raised my head to meet the teacher's gaze. It was the first war, and we tried to collapse each other's minds, but I couldn't understand his mind, and the only way to draw was if I didn't look him in the eye. The only way to draw was to admit defeat, which made me even more uncomfortable. Now I think that at that time, all I saw was my own thoughts reflected in the eyes of my mentor.

I followed the mentor and left.

The laboratory is more robust and tighter after maintenance, and there are special police officers to protect it at all times. This is an exaggeration, because when disaster strikes, there is no such thing as improvisation, just as a particle can only choose one path after passing through a slit.

774's charred hair looked much younger after being cut short. is obviously a good-looking man, but he has to make himself a miasma.

"Them." He spoke to me with a gloomy face, shaking two misshapen fingers, scalding them like feathers, as if he had been kissed by an angel of doom. I know what he's referring to. Those two people.

"What the hell do they want?"

"There's an island that is infested with rats." With a bandage on his head, DTR35 lay casually on the ground, looking at the light overhead. Then the blinding light must have blinded him temporarily. I remembered the blind man and the teacher who held my hand and questioned me. "Can a dead man's eye collapse a wave function?"

"There was a snake that ate rats, and God tried to get these snakes to kill the rats." I don't know when he was so fond of storytelling. "But after a few months, God found that the rats did not go extinct, but multiplied more vigorously, and the snakes survived, and the two pests on the island began to destroy the environment."

"God will not sit idly by, and he sent mongooses, wiser than mice, and cunning than snakes. He hoped that such creatures could kill the catastrophic snakes. "I fiddled with a stub in my hand, I don't know who left it behind from watching the movie, it was a good disaster sci-fi that shattered reality to everyone. I folded it in half and then in half, and all that came to mind was the theory that "a piece of paper can be folded in half nine times at most", and everything else was empty. The paper is very poor, the powder is sprinkled, and it floats happily in the light, like particles.

When God went to observe again, he found that the snake had been captured by the mongoose, and the mongoose could not find the rat hiding in the narrow corner, and it was also on the verge of extinction. He shook his head and left. ”

There was a long pause. 774 asked, "Gone?" ”

"It's gone."

“…… What does the snake represent, and what does the mongoose represent? What exactly do they mean? I frowned, the pieces of paper had shredded into countless confetti that were hard to put together, and I had broken it into many possibilities, even though they had just been one a few seconds ago.

"Who knows the purpose of the serpent?" The DTR35 seemed to answer me, and it seemed to be talking to itself.

"Then," 774 took a deep breath and asked the question on behalf of the three of us, "what will happen to the rats?" ”

DTR35's eyes lit up for a moment, and the time was so short that I could almost convince myself to ignore it, to convince myself that there wasn't such a thing.

"Their idea is simple – to live."