Chapter 43 Chapter Five Wu Hanlei

When you read this text, I am already dead. Who is to blame for my death? the end of the world?Poor survivors?The darkest and cruelest thing that happened underground lately?Sorry, about those terrible events, I can't tell the secret, because once I let you know, I will lose the last confidence in the human species. Maybe, I can only blame myself. April 1.Sunday.Night, 22:19. On a rainy night, I was on the second basement floor of the Future Dream Building, in front of the book counter of Calford Supermarket, where my latest book, the number one bestseller book "Dark Days—The End of the World Is Coming" was piled up there.My name is Wu Hanlei, and I am almost fifty years old.I looked at the photo of myself on the cover, standing in panic in the store that was about to close.There are not many customers in the supermarket tonight, each of them hurried past me, and no one came to me to ask for an autograph.Because of loneliness, I became more and more frightened. I lowered my head and closed my eyes, silently praying to God—the end of the world will come soon.

Sure enough, when I raised my head, the building began to shake violently, sinking rapidly, the lights flickered on and off, and people's panic-stricken cries resounded everywhere. I seemed to see the dazzling light on the wilderness of the Qaidam Basin. In the dark underground, after corpses littered the field, I decided to speak out and save the last survivors of mankind.My words are the most authoritative. After a strong argument, they completely believed my judgment-the end of the world is coming, the people on the earth have been basically extinct, and the future dream building that sank into the ground has become the last Noah’s Ark. Although we They will eventually die after a few days.

I became a well-deserved leader, and even the owner of the building listened to me.We worked out the underground survival rules together. In addition to asking everyone to collect food as much as possible, I, Luo Haoran, and Zhou Xuan were responsible for managing public survival resources—power maintenance, toilet sanitation, disposal of hundreds of corpses, and reasonable distribution of limited oxygen and water. fuel.You don't realize how hard these jobs are.I don't know how many resources will be consumed to support more than 20 people.It's like managing a miniature country. The citizens only know how to blame others, but the head of the government still has to consider everyone's life, old age, sickness and death, and whether the whole society can function normally.

No one sleeps tonight. There was only one person who did not believe my point of view, and that was the oldest seriously injured man in his sixties with a flat nose.I had a conversation with him in private - "I don't believe in the end of the world. The Chinese have gone through ups and downs for five thousand years, and they are still doing well? There are so many countries in the world, just look how powerful the United States is. Ah, how can it be said that it's over and it's over?" Facing his question, I replied calmly: "You have to believe in science. Many civilizations in human history were destroyed in an instant. No one could believe it beforehand."

"You 'scientists' are full of food and talk nonsense all day long. If it weren't for this, who would pay attention to you? Who would care about the results of your hard work in the laboratory? Unless you tell everyone—Earth It will be destroyed soon, and none of you can escape, so you will become the center of world attention." "Well, whatever you think, please live hard!" Sorry, I didn't remember his name until I died. The next two days were perfect!Everyone strictly observed order, the survivors were in order, and the seriously injured were well cared for.Generally speaking, it is normal, and no one has any excessive behavior.The only fly in the ointment is that people can be obedient, but animals do not obey the rules, and cats, dogs, mice and humans compete for food.

Although, sooner or later all the food will be eaten, no matter how we save, the fuel will be used up in a few days - when everyone will suffer from hunger, thirst, cold, darkness, loneliness, despair, and decay. The stench of dead bodies... But I have a strange feeling - as long as I am here, I can lead these people to live until the end of the end. Doomsday?This may sound like an odd statement, but it's exactly what I end my book with, when the last humans on Earth face death from starvation, disease, or old age.That's after seven days?Or seven months later?Or seven years from now?When we all become corpse-eating monsters.

Zhou Xuan and I have seriously discussed this issue. Assuming that all the food is eaten and the animals are hunted down by the survivors—just like prehistoric humans hunted wild animals, after cats, dogs, and even rats are eaten, we will continue to eat. What do you rely on to survive?Will starvation eventually force us to eat the carrion of dead bodies?My answer is: Yes.But Zhou Xuan said: "I would rather starve to death than eat the flesh of a dead person!" "Then you can only choose to commit suicide early." "No, I will choose to starve to death, but I will not kill myself."

Looking at his determined and cold eyes, I feel more like a zombie, the last living thing that survives by eating carrion. On the third day, Guo Xiaojun was brutally murdered. I felt that I might not live to eat the dead body. Zhou Xuan and I asked Luo Haoran, he could see all the surveillance videos, but Luo Haoran said that the murder scene was a blind spot of surveillance, and the murderer could not be found. That night, a more serious incident happened—Xiang, a hair-washing girl, killed four seriously wounded people. When she attacked Zhou Xuan and others, she was killed by Zhou Xuan who was in self-defense.Then, in the underground three-storey garage, Yang Bing, the security guard who died in a car accident, was found.

Six people died overnight, and everyone was panicked. On the fifth night, Mo Xing'er was raped, and she identified the sex devil as white-collar Xu Pengfei. What a pity!I had sexual fantasies about this girl who looked like a movie star and would probably have healthy and beautiful offspring.I almost fell out with someone for this - but it was just fantasy, I didn't have the guts to do it. Early the next morning, after Xu Pengfei attempted to rape Ding Zi, a senior high school girl, he stabbed to death the female cleaner Yu Pingxiang with a knife.Soon, Xu Pengfei's body was found on the second basement floor of the supermarket. Someone drilled his eyes with an electric drill and killed him brutally.When we finished disposing of all the corpses, we found that the high school girl Haimi was missing.

Immediately afterwards, a greater disaster struck - the last drop of diesel was exhausted. The rest of the entire building was plunged into deep darkness. Everyone could only light candles and use flashlights when they acted. Dry batteries became the most precious supplies.No one bothered to talk to me anymore, and each looked for a safe place, desperately protecting the limited food and water.Someone started slaughtering cats and dogs, cooking them in pots of alcohol, eating meat to keep the heat in - idiots, you are also using your last fuel! I wandered alone in the dark, touching the void of air—really thinning oxygen, more and more carrion from below.I opened my eyes wide and couldn’t see anything, like a desperate blind man...Suddenly, a light flashed in front of my eyes, as bright as ten thousand suns. It was the most beautiful and fantastic scene in the world. Become completely desolate like the moon.I hid deep in the observation bunker, held a heavy military telescope, and observed the nuclear test dozens of kilometers away.I saw tears in my father's eyes as everyone around him cheered his success.Many years later, I have been trying to figure out whether my father's tears at that time were due to joy or sadness, and if they belonged to the latter, were they for myself, for my mother, or for other reasons.

Why are you seeing this?Am I not in the ground more than a hundred meters deep?Isn't it among the last survivors of humanity at the end of the world?However, no matter how much I rub my eyes, I still see this scene nearly forty years ago, a memory that has been buried in my brain for so long—that is the most desolate center of the Qaidam Basin, the truly barren land on earth . Father, I still love you so much!Even though I am nearly fifty years old.I have a strong feeling that you didn't die in the end of the world, you are still nestled in the recliner, and your mind is clearly recalling that beautiful and silent night forty years ago, in the clear and almost transparent starry sky of the wilderness, Show me which one is the brightest star, Sirius, and which one is the faintly distant Orion Nebula. I rarely remember my father as a child. He was always hiding behind a certain post box—no address or unit, only a special number. If you write a letter to him, it will take two months to receive it. To, thousands of kilometers away in Xinjiang or Qinghai.There were no telephones, and it was impossible to even send a telegram.Once, my father replied to me with a letter, which was obviously altered, obviously worried that he would reveal state secrets. In fact, this letter from my father just told me that my ancestor was the author Wu Chengen.His descendants were unknown, and it was not until the Qianlong period that someone became a Jinshi and became a scholar.During the Daoguang period, the ancestors of my family were editors and editors of the Imperial Academy, and the four brothers were all famous for their poems.My grandfather studied in Japan, participated in the Revolution of 1911, and later became rich in business.After the Anti-Japanese War, his father went to the United States to study theoretical physics and was Einstein's favorite student.In the 1950s, with patriotic enthusiasm, my father gave up his high-paying job in the United States, followed Mr. Qian Xuesen back to China, and participated in the development of China's first atomic bomb.Since I was born, he has been hiding in the center of the desert, recording and studying the data of every nuclear explosion.So far, his name can still be seen in the list of heroes of the two bombs and one satellite. That year, my mother committed suicide. My grandfather is a famous historian, and my mother is a professor of history at Peking University, who studies the origin of ancient Chinese civilization.Mother's research is different. She focuses on archaeological discoveries abroad, especially ancient human fossils found in Africa.At that time, Chinese academic circles believed that Peking Man, Lantian Man, and Yuanmou Man were the direct ancestors of modern Chinese people, and we evolved into human beings alone in China.But my mother boldly put forward a new point of view, thinking that the ancestors of the Chinese are the same as other races, regardless of whether they are white, yellow or black, they all came from Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago.The Peking Man has long been extinct like Neanderthals, and has no kinship with modern Chinese.Her views shocked the academic circles, and she was characterized as a copy of foreign slave philosophy and Chinese civilization.She was also branded as a reactionary academic authority.Peking University students denounced her as a Soviet revisionist agent or a spy of American imperialism, and a vanguard of imperialism and social-imperialism to destroy the Chinese nation.After being beaten by her own students for a few hours, my mother climbed onto the Weiming Lake in the cold winter months, broke the ice and drowned to death—I saw my mother’s body fished out of the icy lake with my own eyes, like a Sleeping Beauty who never woke up. That year, I was ten years old. I left Beijing alone, sneaked onto a freight train, starved for three days and nights, and arrived in Xining.A few months ago, my father, who was thousands of kilometers away, was suddenly transferred from the hydrogen bomb project. Under the instruction of the supreme commander, he went deep into the desert of the Qaidam Basin to participate in a mysterious project called "Project 101"-this is what my father postal. The number of the mailbox. In the cold mountains and grasslands, I begged for survival along the road, and fainted from hunger several times.A family of Mongolian herdsmen rescued me. They didn't know what "Project 101" was. They only knew that Jiefang trucks often came and went in and out of the wilderness.I followed them, along the deep ruts of the truck, through the no-man's land with only Tibetan antelopes, and came to a truly barren land, the legendary permanent bunker.The soldiers with live ammunition took me to the underground headquarters for interrogation, and only then did I meet my father. He didn't recognize me, but I recognized him.When I said his and mom's name, he hugged me in surprise - he didn't know mom had committed suicide. My father's warm tears hit my face, and I have lived in the "101 Project" base ever since. Here is the closest to the nuclear explosion test site, there is a guard company, and my father is the only researcher.There is a lot of free time in the desert. My father is not as keen on hunting Tibetan antelopes as others. He became my teacher. In addition to mathematics, physics and chemistry, he also taught me Chinese, history, and geography.When I was twelve, I was almost at graduate level in physics.My father never talked about the content of his research, and he forced me to sleep every night, while he got into the laboratory that can protect against nuclear radiation, and stayed up all night. Once, my father made an exception and allowed me to participate in the observation of a nuclear test. He put on a full set of protective clothing and thick glasses for me, hid me in a solid bunker, passed through a narrow opening, and observed the nuclear explosion at close range with a high-powered telescope. .The nuclear test was quite successful and shocked the world the next day. It is said that the master of the Kremlin was stunned and canceled the plan to destroy China that had been drawn up.I will never forget that huge light and flame, it seems that it only needs to wait a few seconds before it can sweep across my face and destroy the whole world.When I was wiping the tears on my father's cheeks and recalling the light just now—as dazzling as New Year's fireworks, a thought suddenly flashed through me: Only by waiting until that day will the greatest festival on Earth be. After that day, my father began to open up to me the results of his research, including the latest geophysical survey data.No wonder every few days, there will be a huge explosion in the wilderness, and I will feel the soles of my feet vibrate violently.It is impossible for nuclear explosions to be so frequent, there must be other reasons-they are using explosives to trigger artificial earthquakes, and the seismic waves are transmitted downwards to explore the secrets deep in the earth.Many mineral resources are found in this way, but they are not prospecting, but have more important goals.The artificial earthquake made by my father is so powerful that it can reach the intensity of a natural earthquake.Fortunately, there is no one inhabited within hundreds of kilometers, otherwise, no matter how strong the building is, it will collapse, and we can only live in the bunker. One night, the nuclear radiation did not exceed the standard, and my father took me out of the bunker alone without wearing any protective equipment.We lay on a high hill and looked up at the clear starry sky. On the plateau with an altitude of more than 3,000 meters, in an ancient and uninhabited land, all the stars are within reach. "Dad, are these stars going to last forever?" I enjoyed it despite the rock solid beneath me and the snot-cold temperature.I think that was the only time in my life when I felt happy. "No, although it is called a star, it is not eternal. Like each of us, there is birth and death." "Do the stars die?" For some reason, my mother's body emerged in my mind, the mother I picked up from the unnamed lake full of ice. "Yes, occasionally, with luck, you can see supernova explosions here with the naked eye—explosions during the death of stars." "Why can't I see it?" "One day, you will see." My father smiled and patted my head. His hand was so big and warm, it warmed my heart.However, I sadly asked: "If even the stars die, will the earth die too?" Suddenly, a string of meteors pierced the night sky. The father replied very seriously: "Yes, the sun must die, the earth must also die, and so will human beings." "Dad, I'm scared." At the age of twelve, I was really scared, more scared than seeing my mother's dead body with my own eyes, more scared than wandering in the wilderness where hungry wolves infested, I was afraid that the day when everyone would die, those who killed my mother The bad guys die like all the good guys, without any difference! My father held me in his arms, breathed out a lot of hot air, and said to himself: "What is life? We are born and then die." Soon, I learned his secret from my father—the research object of the so-called "Project 101" is not nuclear weapons or intercontinental missiles, but when the earth will be destroyed.Either by the U.S.-Soviet nuclear war, by the destruction of the environment by capitalism, or by natural disasters themselves.However, at that time, there will be no distinction between the Eastern socialist camp or the Western capitalist camp, or a small group of imperialist monopoly bourgeoisie, or three-quarters of the working people in the world who are struggling in dire straits. All together. While observing the nuclear explosion data, my father also discovered that in the past ten years, the crustal activity has become more and more abnormal, and various catastrophes have continued as a result. He even predicted the Tangshan earthquake a few years later.Although "Project 101" was just an inadvertent instruction of the supreme commander, my father was so obsessed with this project that he never left the Qaidam Basin for several years. The lonely and hopeless starry sky is his companion—if it wasn't for my company, he would have gone mad long ago. His father's research not only goes deep into the ground, but also points to the sky - he is equipped with the most advanced radio equipment above, which can directly transmit signals beyond the solar system.He firmly believes that he has received a mysterious electromagnetic signal, which cannot be deciphered due to technical obstacles-in short, it is a message from aliens. That year, I was thirteen years old. That is, in that year, great changes took place in China.The hugely invested "Project 101", as well as my father's doomsday research, were dismissed as outrageous nonsense.My father was unwilling to leave the underground laboratory. After all the personnel were evacuated, our father and son persisted for a while. He still wanted to continue to sort out those shocking data until he exhausted all the supplies and waited for death in the heavy snow. Soldiers rescued us.His father was forcibly sent back to Beijing to continue his research on nuclear weapons, but the data he had painstakingly collected over the years was easily destroyed. He's crazy. I thought my father would not live for a few years, but I didn’t expect him to live in a mental hospital for more than 30 years, and he is still sitting in a recliner, describing the nuclear explosion to the patients from morning till night.Half a month ago, I made a special trip to see my father once, and he almost didn't recognize me anymore.I held his hand tightly and looked at his cloudy eyes, as if I had returned to the wilderness of the Qaidam Basin, and looked at his eyes looking at the starry sky—it’s a pity that I couldn’t carry my father’s ashes to the cemetery because he had to will outlive me. My time is running out. In January of this year, when I was participating in an academic seminar on the end of the world in the United States, I fainted on the podium where everyone was watching.The best doctor in the United States diagnosed me and confirmed that I have a malignant tumor in my brain - with luck, I can live for about half a year. After the initial shock, I calmly accepted the result and asked the doctor to keep the condition absolutely confidential.I forego treatment and just keep some painkillers with me.The doctor couldn't determine the cause of my illness, but I naturally thought of that frightening light—was it the result of observing the nuclear test at close range when I was twelve years old?There are many cases of sudden brain cancer due to nuclear radiation, such as the rescue workers in the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Some people suffered from sudden onset decades later, but it does not rule out that they will be safe for a lifetime-for example, they have observed many times The father who survived the nuclear explosion and lived to be eighty years old. I don't regret that life is so short, nor do I regret that I don't have a family and children, and I don't even have a real love of the opposite sex.What makes me proud is that there has never been a Chinese scholar who has gained such a high reputation around the world like me-I don't care about the Nobel Prize in Physics.I can set off a movement that affects the souls of hundreds of millions of people. People of all colors, nationalities, and classes all admire me.They try their best to arrange their own affairs, call for peace, oppose war and promote the great harmony of mankind. Isn't this our vision for the future society? Before the final judgment comes, I am their god. I only have two regrets, one is that I can’t bury my father, and the other is that I don’t know if I can see the end of the world.It's like I've waited all my life, but I haven't seen a supernova explosion with the naked eye. I'm sorry, believe me and adoring readers, I've been waiting for this day for all these years, anticipating the end of the world with unbelievable intensity--since the snowy day when my mother's body was fished up from the unnamed lake, since I witnessed After witnessing the rays of 10,000 suns in a nuclear explosion, since lying with my father in the wilderness of night discussing the death of stars... Before the real end of the world comes, I want to choose a place with the most potential.I don't want to choose an earthquake-prone area, near an active volcanic crater, or a place prone to geological disasters... They will say that I chose it on purpose. I want to find a bustling downtown and a place where disasters are least likely to occur. Future Dream Building. I investigated the geological structure of all the cities along the eastern coast of China, and found that the land has subsided severely in recent decades, especially in the area near this building.I did a private monitoring and confirmed that the building is seriously sinking. In addition, the chemical plants in the suburbs have pumped a lot of groundwater in recent years, resulting in a huge hole in the urban area.If there are some external conditions, serious geological disasters will occur.So, I chose this day, April Fool's Day, on a night of heavy rain, to come to the Future Dream Building alone, and enter the second basement floor of the Calford Supermarket—in this way, I have the feeling of returning to an underground refuge, standing next to the building full of my works. In front of the bookshelf, I prayed for a disaster... Did I move God?If, you exist. April 1.Sunday.Night, after 22:19, I believe it. I also convinced all the survivors in the underground that the end of the world was coming.Those people were convinced and regarded me as the last savior. Is this the last chance fate gave me?I will die at the end of the world, with all the honor and praise, before my brain is eaten away by a malignant tumor. Unfortunately, on the seventh day, the world I had outlined completely collapsed. God is not on my side. When I was alone against the wall—the load-bearing wall of the whole building—I could feel a slight vibration—not from the ground, but from above.I faintly noticed something.Anyway, no one listens to me anymore, this Garden of Eden has become a hell on earth.I sneaked up to the cinema on the ninth floor and swept it into the darkness with a large flashlight. Although the dome was basically intact, the cracks increased and widened.I paid special attention to various pipes, such as sewer pipes and ventilation pipes, which were all blocked by rubble seven days ago, but now there is air circulation-someone opened these pipes!If it weren't for the fresh air coming in through these cracks and ducts, I might have suffocated to death last night from lack of oxygen. Sure enough, I found a bottle of mineral water in one of the pipes.It's just the smallest kind of bottle, wrapped with a layer of plastic paper, with a few words printed in bold fonts - underground survivors, please don't fear and despair, the whole world is paying attention to you, and your relatives look forward to your return day and night Home.We will get through the last few tens of meters soon and bring you back to the ground.Please be sure to conserve energy and maintain order. We will continue to deliver water and food.Enduring to the end is victory! If other survivors saw this bottle of water and these words, they would be ecstatic and wait for the rescuers to arrive. However, I took out the lighter, burned the plastic paper, and drank the mineral water. The end of the world, really, is not here yet. Maybe in a few days or a few hours or a few minutes, someone will fall from the sky and rescue everyone - that's not what I want! For you, the end of the world is over, and for me, the end of the world is finally here. I will be rescued to the ground, and countless cameras will be pointed at me—someone will spit on me, call me a clown, call me a shameless liar, and even say that I am a magician who sells pseudoscience and spreads superstition.All the people who follow me on the earth will be scattered overnight. The rescued survivors would point to my nose and say, "It's all because of your words, Wu Hanlei, that caused us to despair of the world and no longer have hope of being rescued, which finally led to those extremely terrible incidents!" Events so horrific indeed that even I dare not speak out for fear of making the six billion people on the ground even more desperate. When I am abandoned by the whole world, maybe within a few weeks, I will be hiding alone in some small hospital, lying on a dirty hospital bed, tortured by the tumor in my brain until I become a zombie . I don't want to suffer such disgrace and die later.So, I thought of a way to block the opening of this pipeline, and continue to make this place a tomb. Quickly left the ninth floor, put on a mask and returned to the fourth basement floor—most of the corpses were decomposed, full of stench that could make the living faint.But I still approached those corpses, and although they were all changed beyond recognition, they still looked like my friends from yesterday.Not at all afraid, I pushed away a few dead people with swollen stomachs, and pulled up a bunch of scattered limbs until I got into the depths of the mountain of corpses. Now, there are corpses in front of my eyes, and I think of what my father said to me under the mysterious starry sky on a cold night in the Qaidam Basin many years ago: "What is life? We are born, and then we die." Haha, it’s just that, death is just the end of all life, who can escape this day?It's just that they were a little bit more miserable, instead of being burned to ashes and left clean, they became a meal for rats and fly maggots underground.Sure enough, a few maggots crawled across my face, slippery and itchy, but I didn't feel scared. Wait a minute - I think I see something. Although, there is no light. That...that...isn't a person...I'm sure...it's not a person...what is it?No, don't!It got to me.Oh!Get out!No! It's a pity, I can't resist, is this a creature only in hell? I don't know if my mother regretted it after she threw herself into the frozen Weiming Lake.At this moment, I really regret that I have to hide in the pile of dead people to commit suicide - just because I don't want others to see my dead face! Father, if you can still hear it now, if you're still talking about nuclear weapons to strong male nurses in mental institutions-I love you, Father! I will wait for you in another world, I hope the starry sky there is as charming as that in the Qaidam Basin.