A casual essay written based on the world view of "Hallucinogen" in the stable Gu Gu.
The afternoon in the teahouse always makes people feel hot, and there is a sour smell in the air. The mosquitoes that are everywhere make him impatient.
He brushed off the fragments on his coat, stood up, and walked out of the teahouse.
Outside, the heat wave was rolling, making him uncomfortable just like the daytime workplace. He straightened his waist, which was sore from sitting for a long time, and walked forward quickly.
As he walked, he created a room with air conditioning to relieve his fatigue after a day of work. The white room was empty, with only the air conditioning blowing from an unknown source. It seemed that he didn't have the energy to create anything unnecessary anymore. He just wanted to enjoy the cool air.
So he sat quietly on the floor, enjoying the air conditioning that he didn't have during work.
The comfortable environment made him feel drowsy.
"Alert! Excitability has dropped to sixty percent! It is at a dangerous level! It is recommended to end the drug injection quickly!"
The automated equipment seemed to detect his drowsiness. It seemed that sleeping here was one of the few side effects of the drug.
So he quickly pulled out the syringe, and the dizziness that followed made the scene in front of him blurry.
He closed his eyes until the scent of sunflowers spread throughout the house.
He took off the equipment, went to the water supply and poured himself a glass of warm water. Actually, it was just warm water. It seemed difficult for the water supply system in Tianjie to provide hot water.
Everything here is aimed at maintaining the basic functions of life. As for other things, drugs support everything else. It can provide anything that everyone wants.
People survive in Tianjie and live in a hallucination.
He drank all the water and then neatly packed the drugs and equipment in a box. The box was given to him by the Public Security Committee when they rescued him from the ground. His absolute number was also engraved on it. The quality was good, and there was no wear and tear over the years. Thinking like this, his eyelids became heavy, and he was too lazy to lie down on the bed. He fell asleep while holding the box until the alarm clock executed in his brain.
The pain in the frontal lobe of his brain forced him to open his eyes. The morning sun was casually shining, making him feel a little nauseous. He opened the recorder, which was not common in Tianjie because people didn't need it, so naturally they wouldn't manufacture it. This one was given to him by a friend. He recalled the song in the recorder while injecting nutrients. It was a folk song created by a folk singer in the year after the accident. Its name was "Timero", a very soothing song with a lullaby-like feeling.
It was almost time, he got up and washed his face at the water supply, locked the box, and went out. He always took a few deep breaths before going out to ensure that his fear of heights would not occur.
He crossed the street and ran to the elevator, so as not to be late.
He worked at Facility 113, but he didn't know what the facility was for. He only knew that as long as he maintained the transportation system of the facility, he could complete his work, which was not too bad.
"You have arrived at Level 1 Facility Number 113. Please verify your identity."
The cold mechanical synthesized voice came from the speaker of the elevator.
He put his forehead against the scanner, and after a while, the elevator door opened.
"Welcome, employee number 2769. Have a pleasant work day."
He waved his hand and walked out of the elevator. Coincidentally, the door of the neighboring elevator also opened. It was a woman with long hair, one of the few people he knew who could maintain vitality during the day. But he didn't want to waste meaningless energy during the day, so he left without saying hello.
His work was boring and dull. Most of the time, he just sat in a chair, but the little thing in his frontal lobe didn't allow him to leave his seat. He had seen firsthand what would happen when it became active. That little thing probably existed to maintain order.
The crane that transported garbage often passed by his window, and it always threw the needles and syringes to the ground violently, almost covering the entire ground.
"Hey, you came too early."
A man's voice interrupted his thoughts. It was Tim, who was in the next cubicle. Tim was late again today, but strangely, the little thing in Tim's brain seemed indifferent to Tim.
He heard in the facility forum that Tim had undergone surgery in the black market, but he didn't care about these things.
"Where did you go last night, space exploration or journey to the center of the earth?"
This was Tim's classic topic. Tim seemed very interested in what others did at night.
He was a little impatient.
"Nothing special, I had a few cups of tea in the teahouse yesterday and blew some air conditioning."
"Air conditioning? Air conditioning is a good thing, but unfortunately, there is none in 113. But there is cold water in the water supply in the room."
"To be honest, it's quite cold."
"The water supply system can't heat the water, so of course it's cold. "
"I mean your joke is quite cold."
"Well, that's true."
Tim would occasionally have such conversations, which made the daytime less unbearable. Although he was a little impatient, he actually enjoyed listening to him chatter.
He looked at his watch and it was already 6 o'clock. Time flies. He stretched lazily in his chair, ready to go home.
"Number 2769, please collect your items."
A small transport vehicle with a speaker came in front of him, reminding him to take the items.
It was a green potion, distributed at a fixed time every day. This was the reward for people's work.
"See you, buddy. See you tomorrow."
Tim greeted me.
He waved to Tim.
People in the facility always ran home, and Tim was no exception. In a short while, there were not many people left in Facility 113, only a few lights were still on. After tidying up his desk, he also walked to the elevator. Coincidentally, he met Kamil, but she seemed to be in a bad mood, holding several file bags in her hand and giving me a bitter smile. He nodded at her and walked into the neighboring elevator.
The elevator back to the room was much more complicated than when he came. He had to find his own record among hundreds of records to return the same way. Unfortunately, the history records did not have a search function.
The surroundings of the elevator were transparent, and the situation outside could be clearly seen. But he generally didn't look down because the elevator was traveling in the air. He looked around and saw a man in the neighboring elevator injecting drugs before he got home, waving something in his hand and making a ferocious face. It reminded him of a joke that Tim had told him, a person injecting drugs on the street and then taking off his clothes in public. Tim laughed about it for three days.
"Welcome back to your room, number 2769. Please abide by the regulations of your jurisdiction."
The elevator arrived, and he still didn't know what regulations there were in his jurisdiction.
He walked out of the elevator and walked towards his room. There were already very few pedestrians on the street, but there were many strange screams coming from different rooms. Tim called it "monkey in heat". He agreed with this statement.
He was about to open the door of his room when a scream came from a very close place. There was suddenly a wet and hot feeling on his face, and the smell of rust penetrated his nostrils, making him nauseous. He turned his head and looked in the direction of the scream. The man with long hair was holding a long knife and slashing at the people around him like a madman. There was a green light in the man's eyes, which was a characteristic after injecting drugs.
It was not surprising that such drug control incidents happened frequently, but it was the first time he had seen someone with a long knife slashing people. It was not interesting, so he walked into his room.
He hadn't figured out where to go tonight or what to create. Before that, he went to the water supply and drank a glass of warm water. The warm sensation made him decide to go to the ground in his memory.
He opened the box, put on the equipment, which was actually a rack used to fix the injector to prevent situations like what happened on the street today, and there was also an alarm to prevent the injector from falling asleep in the hallucination. After all, the population had decreased to only 30,000 people after the accident, so they naturally needed protection.
He injected the syringe into his arm, closed his eyes, and the drug gave his body a strange sense of suspension. After a while, the expected scenery gradually became clear.
It was the ground before the accident happened. He was in his own home. This gave him a long-lost sense of familiarity, something that had never happened in Tianjie. Every step he took, the scenery would distort along with it. His memory of the ground was not very clear, but it was enough.
He was glad that he didn't listen to Tim's suggestion to go on a space exploration but instead saw his mother.
He turned into a baby lying in his mother's arms, listening to a lullaby. The melody was very familiar, it was the one he heard in the morning.
He felt a chill rising from his spine.
This song's melody shouldn't appear here. He prayed that it was just a problem with his memory.
But his mother's voice quickly calmed him down, and he slowly fell asleep.
In his dream, he vaguely saw tears flowing from his mother's eyes, green tears, the same as the long-haired man, tears of sorrow.
The tears fell from the needle, staining the sunflowers around him with a reddish color.