Wee-woo, wee-woo.
A police siren sounded from the house next door.
The player "Meng Lian Xingchen" lay on her bed with an ethereal air, wearing a short-sleeved pajama top and little pink shorts, her lower legs tucked to one side.
Hearing the siren next door, the round-faced girl snapped to attention, hurried out of bed, and ran to her balcony to look at the neighboring balcony.
That balcony was over ten meters away, quite a distance, but she could see an electric-thrust police aircraft hovering beside it.
"I haven't broken any laws! I refuse to accept this! All I did was post what I saw in my dreams! I wasn't trying to scare anyone!"
A very ordinary-looking, irate young man had both arms restrained by a robot as it escorted him into the police vehicle under arrest.
Meng Lian Xingchen watched the doors close. Then a blue ring appeared around the rear engine nozzle, and the police vehicle spewed a stream of blue ions from its tail as it sped away from the residential area.
Meng Lian Xingchen rubbed her eyes. She had been too afraid to sleep for a whole day, and she desperately wanted to.
She had never expected the neighbor two doors down to be arrested for posting about his dreams.
On Orange Star, the authorities were quite tolerant of free speech.
The entire planet had been unified, and its technology had entered the interstellar age. Orange Star's spacecraft traveled back and forth within its own star system. With such formidable military strength, no comments posted by online trolls could shake Orange Star's technological and military supremacy. They could rant all they liked; technological progress would continue unhindered.
But this time, things really seemed different. The emergence of nightmare disease had sent the whole population of Orange Star into a panic, leaving everyone afraid to sleep.
Just a day earlier, Meng Lian Xingchen had seen an authoritative official announcement from the Scientific Research General Institute, stating that nightmare disease had emerged across the globe through an unknown mechanism.
It advised everyone not to sleep, or to reduce the time they spent in deep sleep, while the cause was being investigated.
The fewer the words, the more serious the situation.
The Scientific Research General Institute had not explained matters in detail, mainly because it still knew too little about nightmare disease.
Meng Lian Xingchen raised the watch on her right wrist and tapped its screen, immediately projecting a screen of light onto the wall.
She tapped it, opened the research administration's official website, and clicked on the news section.
In the news section, the article published eighteen hours earlier, "Virtual Game 'World' Causes Nightmares; Company Currently Undergoing Rectification," had vanished without a trace.
The article published ten hours earlier, "Nightmare Disease Cases Found Outside Gaming Pods; Situation Serious," had disappeared.
The article published eight hours earlier, "Nation Declares Emergency Wartime Status," was gone.
Four hours earlier, there had also been an article titled "Don't Sleep! Don't Sleep!" That, too, had disappeared.
It seemed the authorities had deleted everything related to nightmare disease.
Had nightmare disease been resolved, or had it become even harder to control?
Meng Lian Xingchen had already gone a day without sleep. She desperately wanted to sleep now, but her instincts told her she must not.
The neighbor two doors down had just been arrested, proving that the government was taking unprecedentedly strict measures to control the disease's spread.
She tried to access the forum for the virtual game "World." It had the most discussions about nightmare disease, because the disease's emergence was connected to "World."
Online, many people did not believe playing a game could give them nightmares.
"World" had consequently attracted worldwide attention, and huge numbers of players flooded its forum to question those who had already experienced nightmares.
Whenever a post about nightmares appeared, it would immediately receive over a thousand views.
Leave a nightmare post up for a few hours, and its views could rise into the hundreds of thousands, showing just how much attention the subject drew.
"The '**' game forum is undergoing rectification. We sincerely apologize!"
Meng Lian Xingchen hit refresh, but she still could not get in.
"They've even censored the game's name? Is it that serious?" Meng Lian Xingchen raised her cute little eyebrows.
The nightmare disease situation was more serious than she had imagined. She searched for the company behind the original game, but could not find it at all. The authorities had blocked it.
She browsed around. Every forum that had hosted heated discussions about nightmares was now devoid of nightmare disease posts.
Refusing to believe it, she posted online: "What happened? Why has everything disappeared? How far has the situation progressed?"
Meng Lian Xingchen felt that not a single word in her post had anything to do with nightmare disease, so it should not be deleted.
Two seconds later, however, she was dumbfounded.
The post showed that it had been deleted by an administrator.
She made another post. This time, there were no words, only three symbols.
"???"
This time, the post was not deleted and remained up as usual.
Within seconds, the replies shot past a hundred and the views surpassed a thousand.
"All the posts are gone! The authorities are censoring speech!"
"The strictest controls in history!"
"Everyone, stop talking about it. A friend of mine got a warning from the internet police over this. People who didn't listen have already been hauled into the station for seven days."
"I'm on Machine Intelligence. Just woke up and got online. What's been happening lately?"
"What are you talking about? I don't understand any of this."
"Don't ask. Ask and you get banned!"
This post did not survive long either. Someone wrote "nightmare" in the hundredth reply, and the entire thread was immediately deleted.
Meng Lian Xingchen scratched her head. She could not quite understand this. Why were the controls so strict that people were not even allowed to mention it?
Logically, mentioning it would not kill anyone. Otherwise, everyone would be kept in the dark, and people who did not know how it spread would keep roaming around outside, causing those who had originally been safe to contract nightmare disease instead.
Half an hour later, perhaps because the Scientific Research General Institute felt that saying nothing would make the situation deteriorate in another direction, it issued an explanation:
"Our research has determined that restricting speech is necessary. We advise everyone to cooperate and continue self-isolating. Do not visit other households. Report any onset of symptoms. There is currently no solution."
Orange Star, Scientific Research General Institute, main conference hall.
The red figures reported from around the globe were still rising. These were ordinary people who had seen nightmare disease content online a few hours earlier and were only now reporting to the institute.
The internet had been locked down, but contact between people could not be cut off.
Members of a family, for instance, could discuss nightmare disease face-to-face. There was no way to prevent that.
At present, Orange Star's researchers still believed it spread through the internet. They had not realized nightmare disease's true transmission mechanism.
Elsewhere, in Deep-Sea R'lyeh.
Ke Meng was using Synesthesia to perceive a player's dream when he suddenly heard a faint hymn of praise beside his ears. The singing sounded distant and was filled with emotion.
"Great Cthulhu... sleeping god of R'lyeh... O Great Old One!"
"Someone's summoning me?" Hearing the broken, intermittent voice, Ke Meng immediately knew someone was conducting a sacrificial ritual.
Who could it be at a time like this?
Ke Meng stopped using Synesthesia to perceive the player's dream and instead tried to catch that elusive, ethereal voice calling to him.
Please vote with your recommendation tickets!
Before you continue