- Goal
- Find out where you are and who you are.
- You are
- Unknown.
- Clue
- There is no puzzle in this chapter. Just keep reading.
Your phone lights up. One line appears on the screen:
Playing a role is not difficult. You only need to choose, then act. Without a role, you are only nothingness. Good luck.
You cannot understand it. You do not remember when you fell asleep.
“Fang Li, why are you staring into space?”
Someone is calling you. You look up: bunk beds, four desks, advanced mathematics spread across them. A university dormitory.
And you are certain your name is not Fang Li.
“Here, I bought this for you.” Your roommate pushes a panda plush into your hands.
“…Jingjing?”
A Beijing Olympics mascot. Your heart sinks. Is it 2008?
Archive · Who is Jingjing?
One of the five Fuwa mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Your roommate is only teasing you; you will learn the current year later.
【Don’t be afraid. It’s all right.】
A voice, neither your roommate’s nor your own, calm as an instruction manual, speaks directly inside your head.
“Who?” you blurt out.
“Me?” Your roommate looks puzzled. “Are you still half asleep?”
〖She cannot hear us.〗
Another voice, more panicked than you.
You decide to ignore them for now. The question is not “Who am I?” but “Who should I be now?”
There are no graduate-school exam books on the shelf. Good. Then you see the master’s thesis draft on the desk.
Not good. You are a graduate student, and one close to failing to graduate.
【One more thing,】 the manual voice adds. 【This body is female.】
〖Cloak! You cannot tell her that much at once!〗
【She will discover it sooner or later.】
You remember: the calm voice is Cloak. The panicked one can temporarily be called Emotion.
Archive · What are these two voices?
This world contains a chip called K-1647. A robot fitted with it has two modules speaking inside its mind: the observation module uses 【】, and the emotion module uses 〖〗. The observation module’s words can usually be treated as facts.
Earlier stories appear in Two in One Hundred Thousand and One in Fifty Thousand . You can enjoy the game without reading them.
“Fang Li!” Your roommate taps you. “If we do not leave now, we will be late. If we miss today’s experiment, someone else will take the little black box!”
“The little black box?”
“Fine, I will stop calling it that.” She suddenly turns serious. “Listen: it is not 2008. I found that panda at a second-hand market. It is—”
You take out your phone.
March 9, 2014.
A notification reads: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is missing, with 239 people on board.
Archive · MH370
Malaysia Airlines flight 370 departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing shortly after midnight on March 8, 2014, and lost contact with the ground less than an hour later. Years of searching failed to locate the main wreckage. It remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.
This is the real-world aircraft. You are in another 2014.
【Let us explain,】 says Cloak. 【We were looking for someone named Catherine Wall, but the coordinates of the projection were wrong and pulled you in. Until they are repaired, you must stay here under the identity Fang Li.】
〖Sorry…〗
【Good luck.】
The voices disappear.
You take a deep breath. Fine. So that is how this is going to be.
The dormitory door opens.
“Catherine Wall, daughter of Paulson Wall, officially reporting for duty!” The person at the door plants her hands on her hips. “Just call me Kate. Senior Fang Li, please take care of me!”
She looks at you and pauses. “…Is there something wrong with your eyes?”
“Hm?”
“Never mind. I must have seen it wrong.” Kate waves it away and slaps a sheet of paper on your desk.
- Goal
- Take intern Kate and find the missing aircraft’s black box.
- You are
- Fang Li, a researcher—a graduate student close to failing to graduate.
- Clue
- The instruments in this world display webpages from another world: the articles on this blog.
What a mess, you think.
But you stand up anyway.