"Focus on analyzing the patient zero cases!"
"The two patient zeros, Miss Bai and Miss Sweet, were the first patients to have nightmares. Analysis of their travel records showed that they came directly to the Mech Research Bureau by car and also returned by car."
"Surveillance cameras captured their entire journey along public roads. A total of three hundred and ninety-one people came into close contact with them, but some of those citizens had nightmares, while others did not."
"Researcher Li Shen was the first staff member to receive them. He made a record and began dream-entry testing that night."
"However, according to the latest nationwide screening report, the third Nightmare Disease patient was not Researcher Li Shen! It was an ordinary citizen in another city, a gaming friend of Miss Bai's. He was the true patient three."
"Patient three had never met Miss Bai offline, nor had he visited Mech City in the past two weeks. He only learned of Miss Bai's latest updates through her social feed, then asked her for details and entered the game to test sleeping before the researcher did."
"In addition, ninety-nine percent of cases had never met either patient zero before falling ill..."
Researcher Li Shen sat in the research room, heading the Nightmare Disease Incident Response Team and reviewing earlier progress reports.
He had been the first to receive reports of the illness, and his understanding of Nightmare Disease ranked among the best.
Originally, he had thought the mechanism behind Nightmare Disease was related to Game Pods, but after several cases involving natural sleep appeared, he realized his research had been heading in the wrong direction.
Natural sleep cases meant sleeping naturally in bed, without using a Game Pod's functions or any sleep aids.
Many of those who slept naturally had never been to Mech City. Before suddenly falling ill, they all had one thing in common: they had read complaints on online forums or social feeds.
The earliest instance could be traced back to Miss Bai complaining about her nightmare incident on her social feed, when it had not yet spread very far.
After the people who read her posts had nightmares, they also complained online, venting their frustration.
Healthy people who had not fallen ill read the complaints these new patients posted online, then began showing symptoms when they went to sleep.
At first, the number of infections outside the institute was small. At the institute itself, by contrast, large numbers of staff were having nightmares.
Some researchers had nightmares, while others did not. The difference lay in whether they had carefully read the Nightmare Disease materials on the institute's internal network.
Over the course of a day, Nightmare Disease outside the institute demonstrated its ability to ignore physical isolation and geographical location, spreading far faster than the illness within the institute.
Researcher Li Shen was the first to propose that "Nightmare Disease can spread through the internet."
Li Shen focused his research in one direction, examining every patient's browsing history. The more he read, the more alarmed he became, and the more certain he felt that his theory was correct.
Nightmare Disease spread through the internet!
The mechanism behind its onset was unknown, but its means of transmission definitely had something to do with the internet!
This was far too surreal.
But considering that Nightmare Disease could break through the physical limitations of Game Pods, no amount of surrealism seemed excessive.
"Li Shen, the higher-ups are taking your report very seriously. They're now blocking key phrases and keywords related to Nightmare Disease across the entire internet. We'll see whether it works in a few hours."
The director sat down beside Li Shen, his face clouded with worry.
The director had also experienced Nightmare Disease firsthand. Drowning had felt awful, but that was not the main issue.
For a scientist, the most terrifying blow was the collapse of the edifice of science in their mind.
The way Nightmare Disease spread violated the laws of physics, making it difficult for scientists to accept.
While the two spoke, every supercomputer on Orange Star temporarily set aside less important calculations, diverting vast amounts of computing power into detection and blocking.
They scanned for keywords and key phrases, indiscriminately blocking any statement related to Nightmare Disease. Even posts with no body text, containing only suggestive phrases, had to be blocked!
Orange Star was a unified nation just beginning to enter the interstellar age, with a high degree of intelligent automation. Once this state machine got serious, the speed of its censorship was terrifying.
Some Orange Star citizens had been reading Nightmare Disease posts on forums just a second earlier.
The posts themselves said nothing about how painful it was, only how wondrous the old city inside the whale's belly was and how much archaeological significance it held. A second later, the posts were gone.
Some people had just returned from nightmares and written long stories about the forest, hoping to share them with others. Their posts were deleted less than ten seconds after going live.
Even formal reports released by the authorities were deleted completely, leaving nothing behind.
Within minutes, all online text and other content related to Nightmare Disease vanished from Orange Star's internet. No citizen could browse any text related to Nightmare Disease online. Only internal networks disconnected from the outside world retained relevant materials.
Next, artificial intelligence began checking audio files across the entire internet, a monumental workload. Some people's voice recordings also included accounts of Nightmare Disease incidents.
Orange Star's senior leaders did not yet know whether audio files could spread nightmares, but blocking them first could not hurt.
Nightmare Disease was spreading so quickly that the sooner they blocked it, the sooner they could curb its spread.
Somewhere in a city on Orange Star.
The player "Ye Ao Nai Wo He" frowned and swiped at his screen, discovering that the post he had made ten seconds earlier had already been deleted.
Thinking his connection had lagged, he posted it again.
The instant the post went live, the AI internet police deleted it and displayed a warning: "You are suspected of posting illegal content. This is your first pop-up warning! Please note: anyone who continues posting illegal content after three warnings will be detained for seven days!"
At the bottom of the pop-up were two buttons. The first read, "I have read this and promise not to post related content again."
The other button read, "Refuse."
"What the hell is this? What did I do that's illegal?" Seeing the window displayed by the internet police, the hotheaded guy immediately clicked refuse.
"Second warning!"
The old window disappeared, but a new red window popped up. The warning count changed from "one" to "two," with another pair of buttons at the bottom.
Veins bulged on the hotheaded guy's forehead. He dug in his heels, convinced he had done nothing illegal.
"You #￥*# piece of crap! I refuse!"
"Third warning!"
"Refuse!"
After he pressed the refuse button, the red warning window finally stopped appearing. Peace returned to the world, and the hotheaded guy felt he had won.
But a minute later, a siren wailed outside his window.
He turned to look and saw an electrically propelled aircraft painted blue and white hovering at the edge of his balcony.
Whoosh!
The vehicle door opened, and the balcony railing automatically detached. A small, finely built robot police officer strode over, holding an electric baton in its right hand and a freshly printed detention order in its left. It declared loudly, "You are suspected of endangering public safety and network security. You are hereby detained!"