"Isn't it like that before?" Hao Ren asked, sensing there was something in Nolan's words.
"Before that? In the beginning?" Nolan thought for a moment. "It was not like that at the beginning. The earliest 'scripts' I remember was peaceful. Although the resetting of the world was strange, the world was very safe. There was no war; people were rich. Now when I think of it, except that it was a bit boring, life back then was comfortable—so comfortable that it was boring. Sometimes I lived with my family in a big house in the mountains. Sometimes I was a peaceful and contended citizen. I remember I even was the daughter of a president and princess of a small country on the sea... there were eras without war."
Hao Ren listened in surprise. He had thought that the world would see doomsday of gunfire every time it reset itself. But he least expected the most hidden memory in Nolan's mind was a pastoral era. He paused and then asked, "When was the first time war broke out?"
"I can't remember it," Nolan whispered. "You know, it's tough to remember the exact time after each reincarnation. I can only estimate that it was in the middle part of my timeline memory... Probably three or four thousand years ago or more, the world became more dangerous after each reincarnation. Initially, there were sporadic wars in the 'scripts,' followed by natural and human-made disasters when resetting was imminent, and then large-scale war and mass extinction. In the recent dozens of rounds of resetting, the world had shown signs of ending, which began with an iconic catastrophe."
"The loss of control of the Nanomachine Swarms," Hao Ren whispered, "might be an illusion itself. But it has symbolic significance. Maybe it represents the direction of the world or some sort of 'mainline'?"
"The world is an absurd stage play," said Nolan with a blank expression. "Probably the director of this stage drama happens to like disaster movies."
Nolan liked to describe the world as a stage, and used 'scripts,''director,' and 'drama' to tell her stories. Hao Ren agreed strongly with her. But he had other thoughts. "Have you tried to contact the people from the 'real world' or the 'conscious world'?"
"You mean 'people' who control the stage from the outside?" Nolan looked at Hao Ren, suddenly smiled. "I did many years ago. But it was useless, no one had responded. Even if I made a hell of a noise and chaos, drop a nuke in the city and shift the entire continental shelf, no one responded. They just silently pressed the restart button and replaced the broken stage with a new one. 'Wake up' is unrealistic. We are all trapped here. We are just part of the script. The person holding the text does not care about the complaints of our small-fry characters."
"Sound like you've given up," Hao Ren sighed. "If possible, contacting the lucid world is the only way."
He felt that things had fallen between a rock and a hard place. In the reality of the Plane of Dreams, he could not locate the position of Planet Zorm; on this 'fake stage,' he could not contact the real world. And if he were to wake up forcibly, he could only get up from his hibernation pod. A certain sleeping rule was preventing him from contacting the mastermind of this world. Although it seemed there was just a thin veil; it was elusive.
It was like on pins and needles.
Hearing that Hao Ren was interested in the lucid world, she warned. "Don't try to do a stupid thing or even think about this. Khiton went insane because of this. I've tried it once, suffered brain damage, and spent four years in the hospital. The world must have some mechanism to stop us from leaving. We can't fight it."
"Brain damage?" Hao Ren's heart missed a beat. "This world will respond to anyone for having the escape thought?"
Hao Ren's eagerness shocked Nolan. "What do you want to do?"
Hao Ren was excited. "If we could trigger the 'response,' does it not mean that we can approach the mastermind?"
"My advice to you is to forget about this idea immediately," Nolan's brows pulled together. "Let's not talked about where you're going to start first, are you convinced that the one behind all this will be interested in a little 'characters' like us? I have the gut feeling that even the consciousness that keeps our memory intact is intentional, the 'director' left it in us to give the entire play more kicks."
Hao Ren exhaled as he leaned against the offroader with his hands on the back of his head. "If this is true, then that is one bad 'director.'"
Nolan's warning was of little effect to him. Regardless of who or what was behind the world, 'it' was not likely to affect a spiritual body. Hao Ren was now glad that he had come in a dream. There was a set of advanced Xi Ling hibernation pods as a security lock. He was not afraid of the world's counterattack. But before he went on the 'offensive,' he must first find the key to dialogue with the mastermind behind this world.
"Nanomachine Swarms..." Hao Ren murmured. He recalled the mysterious voice he had heard while entering the ruins of the north. His gut feeling told him that that was what he should be after. "The world would invariably come to an end in the recent reincarnations. Nolan, do you think this is simply because the scriptwriter has a bad hobby?"
Nolan looked at him curiously. "You mean..."
"Even if you like disaster movies, you would vomit after watching them over and over again," Hao Ren said slowly. "I'm more inclined to think that the mastermind did not have full control over the situation. Or maybe there is something wrong with his program that causes the world to collapse after a certain time. You have said that the world's many rounds of reincarnation were peaceful. It seems to me like a paradise. I think anyone who could create this paradise would not change their temperament suddenly to want to end the world."
Nolan remained silent. She looked quietly at Hao Ren for a moment, feeling that this man was naive, but she was not going to say anything. She believed that as long as Hao Ren experienced more of the same reincarnation as she did, he would begin to think like her.
Nolan was once naive—more than once. Today, though she looked young, life's vicissitudes had hardened her. After the excitement of finding her 'companion' gradually faded away, she shifted her focus away from discussing the nature of this imaginary world to thinking about what they should do next.
"This round of reincarnation is worse than before. It seems that we were already on the battlefield from the very beginning." Nolan said as she massaged her temples with her finger and whispered. "If my memory is right, this time the 'script' will go like this: The planet's aerospace technology is in an abnormal state. A huge 'celestial empire' controls all the cutting-edge technologies and prohibits the 'mortal countries' from launching high-orbiting vehicles into space. The empire would label those who conduct space research on their extremists and killed them as if they were terrorists. Now, there is a serious power struggle inside the 'celestial empire.' The progressive nobles also leaked some scientific and technological materials while other countries in the world are uniting to plot against the overlord. Perhaps a world war will break out, and the scale will be no less devastating than the sixty-year war in the previous reincarnation."
"What is your identity this time?" Hao Ren casually asked.
"A freelance fighter in a modified vehicle," Nolan patted the big tires she was leaning against on her back. "In simple terms, it's called robber. I came here for the high commission for guarding the secret base. But I just dropped my employer and ran away, there would be some trouble soon, but no worry, I'm used to it... Every time after the world reset, I would be in a muddle for some time. Retaining the reincarnation memory comes at a price. It's not always easy to integrate into the new roles."
Nolan pasted a smile and shook her head. Then a thought suddenly came to mind. She said, "Oh yes, I need to remind you, if you bump into other guys from Grey Fox, though sorry, they are not necessarily on our side this time. If they're hostile, give them a quick death, if possible."
The girl-corpse-MDT, which was sitting in a 4-figure posture not far away suddenly chimed in. "Is that necessary?"
"Just to keep us alive," said Nolan. "Anyway, sooner or later, the world will reset again. What is the use of getting so emotional? Being naive is the last thing you want here."