Marvel?

Mo Fei was deep in thought when dozens of computer users experienced data loss—emails sent, instant messaging conversations, file transfers, and more. Some of the content was extremely sensitive, even illegal, and the senders were on edge.

They had no idea whether the recipients had received their messages. After half a day with no reply, those with clean consciences simply resent their messages, while those with guilty consciences grew anxious.

Paul sent two messages to his online girlfriend Alice, but they vanished without a trace. This left him utterly dejected. He pounded his keyboard frantically, pouring out a stream of grievances to Alice, only for her to be completely baffled.

"Paul, what's wrong? You didn't reply to me for ages, and now you're dumping a pile of complaints on me. Did you send them to the wrong person? Some other woman?" Alice's words made Paul freeze.

"Of course not! You're the only one in my heart. But I sent you two messages earlier, and you didn't reply at all—it broke my heart! Cry o(╥﹏╥)o!" Paul hurriedly replied.

"What? Why didn't I receive them?" Alice asked, puzzled. She then sent a screenshot of their conversation. Paul stared at it, dumbfounded, before sending a screenshot of his own chat log to Alice. She looked it over. "Alright, honey, it's probably a network issue. Don't be upset. But I'm still not ready to meet you in person—it's too soon!"

While the two were going back and forth, Mo Fei made a decision: first, find a computer to use as a platform, see if he could do anything with it, or learn through it. He also needed to figure out other things—he had no clue yet whether he was still in his original world or had traveled through time. This had to be clarified.

Mo Fei weighed his options. The dozens of data streams he had absorbed earlier included some dangerous ones—potentially with strong firewalls or antivirus software. Mo Fei was wary of those. After all, he was likely just a set of data now, and firewalls or antivirus programs might be his natural enemy. So he decided to target an ordinary person whose computer wouldn't have advanced defenses.

With that in mind, Mo Fei settled on Paul. From the messages this guy sent, he was clearly a shut-in, practically oozing loser vibes. Picking him should be much safer. Mo Fei remembered the path and turned back. Just then, another stream of light slammed into him. He absorbed it and found it was correct. "My memory is this good? Or have I already recorded all these positions?"

Strange. Mo Fei was baffled. Why did he know the exact location, yet still feel so uncertain? His choice was spot-on, but his mind still couldn't be sure. "Can't figure it out!" Mo Fei locked onto the direction and took a step. The next moment, he arrived at the endpoint. Yes, the endpoint—inside Paul's home computer. There was no path ahead. The instant he arrived, Mo Fei saw countless streams of light flickering and moving, but none went far.

They just kept appearing, moving, and disappearing within a fixed range. "Looks like a data processing area. For a computer, that would be the CPU." Mo Fei wasn't a computer science major; he could only guess. In his impression, the place with the most data in a computer was the central processing unit.

Mo Fei figured that to control a computer, he'd need to control its CPU. But how? His meager computer knowledge left him at a loss. Finally, he decided to absorb those streams of light and see what happened.

Paul's computer was doomed. He had installed a firewall and antivirus software—in the US, copyright laws were relatively strict, and pirated stuff was absolutely illegal. But Mo Fei's actions didn't trigger the firewall or antivirus. He encountered no danger, easily intercepted the streams of light, and absorbed a massive amount of information.

Paul, on the other hand, was in for a rough time. "Frozen? No response?" He jiggled the mouse, pounded the keyboard, and executed a smooth series of operations—all for nothing. Every command was intercepted by Mo Fei at the CPU level. Paul was furious. "What's going on today? First data loss, and now my computer freezes?"

With a grim face, Paul made a decision: a warm reboot—pressing Ctrl, Alt, and Del simultaneously. Still nothing. "WTF?" Paul exploded. He then slammed the cold reboot button on the power supply.

A cold reboot was more brutal—cutting power entirely and restarting the computer, risking loss of unsaved data. Paul was livid. What terrible luck today—nothing was going right.

Mo Fei suddenly noticed all the streams of light vanish, but they reappeared shortly after. Now he understood a lot more. The massive amount of information he had just absorbed gave him a basic ability to control the computer.

The CPU includes arithmetic logic units, registers, control units, and so on. Mo Fei stopped absorbing data—the user was clearly furious now. He had finally found this place, and the most important thing was to gather information.

Mo Fei pointed in a direction, and a stream of light shot from his fingertip—a control command. First, he pinned Paul's chat window to the top, permanently, so Paul wouldn't see any other pages Mo Fei might pop up. Then he fired another stream of light. "Let me use Baidu to see where I am." But the next moment, Mo Fei was dumbfounded—the speed was painfully slow. The feedback indicated the page was struggling to load.

"Am I really an intelligent system? I forgot I'm in America—I should use Google!" Mo Fei quickly canceled the previous command and opened Google instead. The first thing he checked was the time.

This time, it was fast. The exact date appeared: February 2, 1997. Mo Fei felt a pang of melancholy. "So I really did travel through time—at least in terms of time. I died in 2018! Let's check the hot news and see if this is still my original world." Mo Fei wallowed for a few seconds—since waking up, he had been in shock, so nothing surprised him anymore.

The top news story: "Mr. Tony Stark once again secured the largest military contract this year with his brilliant designs, driving Stark Industries' stock up again. Competitor Hammer Industries could only scrape up the leftovers. Mr. Tony Stark stated, 'Stark Industries doesn't produce junk!'"

Please throw in your recommendation tickets! The new book is in its promotional period, and the word count is still low—feel free to let it marinate. But please, toss your tickets to Lazybones!